Challenger Quality and Voting Behavior in U. S. Senate Elections

A number of aggregate-level studies find that challenger quality is an important variable in explaining congressional election outcomes. Using the National Election Studies' 1988 Senate Election Study, I provide individual-level evidence supporting this claim. I develop and test measures of two aspects of challenger quality, one based on political experience and the other on campaign skills. Senate challengers who hold higher profile offices and those who are good campaigners are better known and better liked by voters and are much more likely to get votes, even with partisanship and campaign spending controlled. The findings reaffirm that candidates and campaigns matter in explaining election outcomes.