Party Ideology, Organization, and Competitiveness-Hill1993

Party Ideology, Organization, and Competitiveness as Mobilizing Forces in Gubernatorial
Elections
Author(s): Kim Quaile Hill and Jan E. Leighley
Source: American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Nov., 1993), pp. 1158-1178
Published by: Midwest Political Science Association
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Party Ideology, Organization, and
Competitiveness as Mobilizing Forces in
Gubernatorial Elections
Kim Quaile Hill, Texas A&M University

Jan E. Leighley, Texas A&M University
Using aggregate data on statewide turnout, we examine the relative importance of

party ideology, organization, and competitiveness as mobilizing forces in U.S. gubernatorial
elections. We find that party competitiveness and ideology are significantly related to turn-
out, while party organization is not. We also show that the effect of each party attribute is
essentially the same in presidential and off-year elections; that party ideology and competi-
tiveness remain significant when controlling for candidate spending; and that the impact of
ideology and competition differs depending on the restrictiveness of a state's voter registra-
tion requirements. Party competition is the only significant mobilizing force in states with
more restrictive voter registration laws, while party ideology and candidate campaign spend-
ing are mobilizing forces in states with less restrictive registration laws.
Political parties are widely acknowledged to be critical actors in the

mobilization of voters in U.S. elections. Even in contemporary circum-
stances where many allege that U.S. parties are in ideological disarray
or decline and suffer relative organizational weakness, party organiza-
tions are nonetheless recognized as significant mobilizing institutions
(Bibby et al. 1983; Huckfeldt and Sprague 1992; Jewell and Olson 1982;
Krassa 1988; Sorauf and Beck 1987). Indeed, Burnham (1982, 121) de-
scribes the mobilization of the mass electorate as "contingent on the
existence, competition, and organizational vitality of political parties."
Scholars have identified three distinct features of political parties
or party systems that may affect voter mobilization: competitiveness,
organization, and ideology. Some have also noted that these three charac-
teristics either interact with, or are contingent upon, each other. V. 0.
Key (1949, 302-10) asserted, for example, that only in a competitive
two-party system would candidates take distinct ideological positions.
Although the salience of these party characteristics is generally
agreed upon, their individual and joint effectiveness in mobilizing individ-
uals to vote has not been established. This is the case in good part be-
cause of the difficulty of developing measures of all three of these party
attributes for a single empirical analysis. Yet data from several recent
studies of political parties in the U.S. states now make it possible to
American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 37, No. 4, November 1993, Pp. 1158-1178
C 1993 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713
PARTY FORCES IN GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS I I59
assess the importance of party and party system characteristics for voter
mobilization. In this paper, we examine the relative importance of party
competition, organization, and ideology as potential mobilizing forces in
U.S. gubernatorial elections.
We also consider how these characteristics might be related to each
other. Key's comments above are echoed by Burnham (1982, 1987), who
emphasizes that the effectiveness of organization and competition in mo-
bilizing individuals is contingent upon the ideological postures of the
party system. Hence, we test whether the effects of competition and
organization on voter mobilization are dependent on the ideological attri-
butes of state political parties.
Next, we assess the influence of these party attributes in the contem-
porary electoral and legal context of state political systems. Historical
analyses of political parties acknowledge the importance of each period's
demographic, socioeconomic, legal, and organizational structure as con-
ditioning the effectiveness of party mobilization efforts (e.g., Kleppner
1982). Hence, to assess accurately both how and how well parties mobi-
lize voters in the United States today, we must consider other mobilizing
institutions that simultaneously affect turnout.
In particular, we are interested in assessing the importance of party
characteristics vis-a-vis that of candidate spending. Empirical studies
have consistently shown that candidate spending stimulates turnout in
elections (Caldeira and Patterson 1982; Caldeira, Patterson, and Markko
1985; Copeland 1983; Cox and Munger 1989; Patterson and Caldeira 1983;
Tucker 1986). Further, campaign expenditures are considered by many
observers to represent the most critical aspect of contemporary elec-
tions-where candidate-centered behavior and election tactics are widely
alleged to have displaced the traditional functions of the political parties.
Hence, we consider whether party attributes have an independent effect
on voter turnout when candidate spending is considered.
Finally, we are interested in how voter registration requirements
might inhibit the effectiveness of party mobilization. Various scholars
have shown that voter registration requirements (i.e., closing date, mail-
in voter registration, absentee ballots) reduce voter turnout (Cox and
Munger 1989; Jackman 1987; Nagler 1991; Patterson and Caldeira 1983;
Powell 1986; Rosenstone and Wolfinger 1978; Wolfinger and Rosenstone
1980). We consider whether registration requirements modify the effects
of party attributes on voter turnout, with the expectation that party attri-
butes will be less effective in states with more restrictive voter registra-
tion requirements. These additional analyses allow us to determine more
precisely the contemporary significance of political parties for voter mo-
bilization in the United States.
i i6o Kim Quaile Hill and Jan E. Leighley
Party Mobilization in the United States
Patterson and Caldeira (1983) offer the most persuasive evidence on

the importance of mobilization in gubernatorial elections, concluding that
political factors (i.e., party competitiveness, candidate spending, and
closeness of the election) rather than demographic characteristics (e.g.,
education and income) are the best predictors of aggregate statewide
turnout. Patterson and Caldeira make the conventional assumption that
the relative electoral success of competing slates of candidates from the
two parties reflects a significant attribute of state party systems, and their
evidence suggests that this is the case. Yet this study, like earlier research
on competition and turnout (e.g., Gray 1976; Hofstetter 1973), ignores
party organization and ideology as factors that might also affect turnout
(see also Caldeira and Patterson 1982; Caldeira, Patterson, and Markko
1985; Tucker 1986).
Likewise, studies of party organization typically fail to consider com-
petition and ideology as potentially significant factors. Huckfeldt and
Sprague (1992), for example, skillfully explicate the individual- and
aggregate-level consequences of party contacting in South Bend, Indiana,
during the 1984 presidential election, but they consider party competitive-
ness only in terms of majority/minority party status and ignore the par-
ties' ideological postures (see also Bledsoe and Welch 1987; Cotter et al.
1984; Frendreis, Gibson, and Vertz 1990; Kramer 1970-71). Other studies
using national survey data on party contacting typically ignore the effects
of party competitiveness or party ideology (e.g., Krassa 1985, 1988).
No studies of the influence of party ideology on voter turnout have
been reported, though Zipp (1985) finds that candidate ideology affects
turnout in presidential elections. He finds that individuals who take ideo-
logical positions that are equidistant from the two candidates' positions
or who take ideological positions that are far from either candidate's
position are significantly less likely to vote. Whether party ideologies
similarly affect turnout-independently of party organization and compe-
tition-is unknown.
The general effectiveness of these party characteristics is also widely
argued to be contingent on their interaction. As noted above, Burnham
(1982, 121-57; see also Kleppner 1982; Key 1942, 1949) argues that the
history of parties in the United States indicates that they have been most
successful at mobilizing voters when they were well-developed organiza-
tionally and offered notably different ideological positions-in particular,
with one party clearly representing lower-class interests.
There is some systematic empirical support for the expectation that
organization and competition might interact to affect turnout. Patterson
PARTY FORCES IN GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS II6I
and Caldeira (1984) demonstrate that the combined organizational

strength of the two major parties at the local level is associated with the
state's overall level of party competition. Similarly, Barrilleaux (1986)
found that the relative strength of Republican organizations (compared
to Democratic organizations) was moderately associated with an increase
in party competition during the 1970s. Yet Cotter et al. (1984, 85-93)
found that the relationship of party competition to organization in the
states has differed across time: the relationship was strong in the 1960s
but essentially vanished in the 1970s.
To summarize, previous research has not established the indepen-
dent effects of party competition, organization, and ideology on voter
mobilization. Historical analyses suggest that the effects of party organi-
zation and party competition are contingent upon the ideological po-
sitions of the parties. Moreover, both theory and empirical evidence
suggest that the influence of party characteristics on voter mobilization
may be contingent on other political and social forces of the period.
Data and Measures
To examine the various relationships discussed above, we employ

state-level data from a variety of sources. Most of these measures are
derived from data collected over a period of several years. Hence, our
cross-sectional analyses rely on indicators of durable, contemporary po-
litical characteristics of states, little affected by the random or unique
error components in many single-year measures.
Our dependent (turnout) variable is the average, officially reported
vote in gubernatorial elections between 1980 and 1986 as a proportion of
the voting age population (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1987 and earlier
volumes).' Party competition is assessed using the folded Ranney (1965)
index of competitiveness in gubernatorial and state legislative elections
for 1980-86. This commonly used measure of partisan electoral success
indicates the relative electoral strength of the two state parties and is
likely to affect turnout by modifying individuals' calculations of their
probability of affecting the outcome: in competitive party systems, an
individual's single vote might well make a difference in which party con-
trols the government. This variable was calculated by the authors with
data from the Council of State Governments (1988 and earlier volumes)
and the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1987 and earlier volumes).
Our principal indicator of party organizational strength is the average
'For the states of Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi, 1979 election turnout data
were included in the average to ensure that at least two elections would be employed for
the mean estimate for each state.
II62 Kim Quaile Hill and Jan E. Leighley
of the local Democratic and Republican organization scores reported by

Cotter and others (1984) and derived from a survey of party county chair-
persons conducted in 1979-80. We use the average of the two measures
because they are so highly correlated (r = 0.78), and thus we have a
single measure of local party organizational strength that eliminates the
multicollinearity problem introduced by using the separate measures and
allows us to test a more parsimonious model of party mobilization. As
explained below, however, we also tested a number of alternative mea-
sures of party organization strength-all of which lead to the same
conclusions about the importance of this party attribute for voter
mobilization.
Our hypotheses about party ideology are based on the assumption
that intraparty ideological relationships (i.e., those between party elites
and identifiers) are central to the mobilization process. Elites shape the
core ideology of the party in each state, and the party's mass followers
should be the most readily mobilizable pool of voters in response to that
effort. Thus, we use separate measures of the ideological relationships
between elites and mass identifiers in each of the two major parties.
Ideally, we would relate these intraparty ideological linkages to the
mobilization of each party's mass followers. But since turnout measures
by party are not available for such a test, we estimate the effects of these
linkages on aggregate turnout instead. This provides a valid test of the
effect of party ideology on turnout, for if the elite/mass linkage for either
party increases the turnout of its respective followers, aggregate turnout
will increase as well. Precisely because both parties may not consistently
adopt the optimal ideological posture, or because different ideological
positions may be efficacious for different parties, using the two separate
measures of elite/mass ideological linkage proves to be particularly re-
warding. As we demonstrate below, it ultimately reveals partisan differ-
ences in the relationship between ideological elite/mass linkages and
aggregate mobilization.
We test two different hypotheses about how mass/elite ideological
linkages may affect turnout. Both conceptions of the role of ideology
in mobilization are suggested in prominent theoretical and descriptive
literature, but they have not been subjected to the kinds of empirical
tests contemplated here. Adopting classic spatial modeling assumptions
(Downs 1957), we first hypothesize that the greater the ideological prox-
imity between each party's activists and its mass identifiers, the higher
the aggregate turnout. To test this hypothesis, we have created for each
party a measure of the closeness of activist and identifier ideological
positions in each state. That measure is the absolute value of the differ-
ence between the mean liberalism-conservatism scores of each party's
PARTY FORCES IN GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS I I63
activists (compared to the activists of other state parties) and its mass
identifiers (compared to mass identifiers of other state parties).2 The activ-
ist mean scores are those derived by Erikson, Wright, and McIver (1989)
using multiple measures from four earlier studies of different groups of
activists executed over the period 1972-80. The mass identifier mean
scores are those developed by Brown and Wright (1985) by pooling a
number of CBS-New York Times national opinion surveys from the pe-
riod 1976-82.
Two different, but complementary, lines of reasoning support our
second hypothesis on the relationship between ideology and turnout.
Here we hypothesize that the relative ideological positions of elite
and mass partisans, rather than the absolute distance that separates
them, affects turnout. This hypothesis is suggested by the conclusions of
Burnham, Key, and Kleppner that ideology is a stimulus for mobilization
when parties take distinctive ideological positions and when, especially,
there is a clearly liberal party. Thus, we expect that Democratic iden-
tifiers will be mobilized by a party elite that is relatively more liberal,
while Republican identifiers will be mobilized by a more conservative
party elite.
This hypothesis is also suggested (and the mechanics of how it oper-
ates may be explained) by research in the spatial modeling tradition on
the problem of voter uncertainty about candidates' or parties' issue posi-
tions. Of particular relevance is Downs's (1957, 260-76) claim that unin-
formed (i.e., uncertain) individuals are particularly unlikely to vote, for
which Palfrey and Poole (1987) provide supporting empirical evidence.3
Hence, when voter uncertainty is reduced, voter turnout should increase.
Accordingly, we expect that when the ideological postures of com-
peting parties reduce voter uncertainty, they also mobilize voters. A pro-
spective voter's ability to distinguish between the parties and determine
whether one of them is preferred is especially taxed when party organiza-
tions are ambiguous about their policy preferences or when both parties
adopt relatively centrist preferences. The parties' ideological positions
provide crucial information to the voter: the more extreme the ideological
position of the party, the easier it is for prospective voters to recognize
the party's position accurately and reduce uncertainty. Hence, greater
2Because these two component measures are differently scaled, we standardize the
original component measures before subtracting one from the other and take the absolute
value of the result.
3Various other scholars have explored how information levels affect individual vote
choices and election outcomes (see, among others, Shepsle 1972; Enelow and Hinich 1981;
Bartels 1986).
II64 Kim Quaile Hill and Jan E. Leighley
ideological extremity of the party elites is hypothesized to enhance aggre-

gate turnout.
To assess the ideology of party elites relative to mass identifiers, we
must take into account the fact that both parties differ a good deal in
their ideological postures from state to state. Hence, this ideology mea-
sure must be state specific (i.e., the ideological positions of party elites
must be assessed relative to the mass identifiers in their own state). Our
measures of relative activist liberalism are, then, the differences in mean
liberalism of activists and their mass followers within each state for each
party (employing the elite and mass ideology variables discussed earlier).
Our hypotheses are that turnout is higher in states where Democratic
activists are more liberal than their followers and where Republican activ-
ists are more conservative than their followers. Because both indicators
are constructed from component indicators with the same scaling, posi-
tive scores on both imply that the party elite is more liberal than its
followers. Hence, we expect to find a positive relationship between the
Democratic activist liberalism measure and turnout and a negative rela-
tionship between the GOP measure and turnout.4
Our campaign spending measure is the total spending of all guberna-
torial candidates in a given election year for each state, divided by the
voting age population of the state. Such data have only recently become
available on a nationwide basis, so our measure is for elections held in
the period 1984-87, depending on the election cycle in any given state.
The expenditure data are from Beyle (1988) and other editions of the
same report.
We employ a voter registration index that is more comprehensive
than that typically used in empirical research. Following Rosenstone and
Wolfinger (1978; see also Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980), most prior
research has employed only the closing date-the number of days before
an election an individual must register to be qualified to vote-as an
indicator of voter registration requirements. This measurement strategy,
however, ignores the variety of circumstances and procedures by which
one may register in different states and that themselves constitute an
important aspect of the restrictiveness of such systems. Thus, we use an
4An alternative version of the hypothesis regarding the importance of ideology might
be one that ignores the need to establish a state-specific benchmark for assessing the relative
liberalism or conservativism of party activists. In this conceptualization, one might simply
use the mean liberalism of the activists as the measure that would best capture the mobiliz-
ing potential of this party characteristic. We find this alternative less theoretically appealing
than the one employing state-specific benchmarks, but we tested the power of these mean
activist liberalism measures in multiple regressions not reported fully here but equivalent
to those included in Table 1. These alternative ideology variables were never statistically
significant in any of these analyses.
PARTY FORCES IN GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS II65
interactive measure that is created by multiplying the standard closing

variable by a six-point scale of the difficulty of the registration process.
The latter scale, based on data derived principally from the U.S. Bureau
of the Census (1987, 245) and the National Center for Policy Alternatives
(1986), divides states among those with: (1) no registration requirement;
(2) election day registration at the polling site; (3) election day registration
at nonpolling sites (e.g., the county courthouse); (4) required advance
registration, including "motor-voter" procedures; (5) required advance
registration, including mail procedures; (6) other requirements.
Finally, we use a dummy variable for whether a state held any of its
gubernatorial elections in the 1980-86 period on presidential election
ballots to capture the elevated turnout customary in such elections
(Patterson and Caldeira 1983).
Ideology, Organization, and Competitiveness in U.S. Elections
Evidence regarding the independent relationships of party ideology,

organization, and competitiveness to turnout in U.S. state elections is
presented in Table 1. These models include measures of party competi-
tiveness, ideology, and organization, as well as a dummy variable for
presidential elections. Following the discussion above, two alternative
specifications of party ideology are considered, resulting in two estimated
equations. Each model provides relatively strong predictive power, with
R2 values of 0.55 and 0.58, although the substantive findings regarding
ideology differ across the two models.
The presidential election variable controls for mobilizing forces that
result from the presence of a presidential campaign. As expected, its
estimated coefficient is positive and significant: turnout is significantly
higher in states that hold their gubernatorial and presidential elections
concurrently.
Party competitiveness is also positively related to turnout, hence
replicating earlier studies that show that turnout is higher in states that
have competitive party systems. Party organizational strength is nega-
tively related to turnout, but the estimated coefficient is not significant.
This finding was sufficiently remarkable that we tested several other
party organization measures to verify that our null finding was not an
artifact of this particular measure of party organization.5 None of these
5The alternative measures included separate indices of Democratic and Republican

local and state organizational strength and the local organizational strength of the most
competitive party in the state during the 1980s (Cotter et al. 1984). Indicators of party
organizational capability from other sources were also tested, including: "traditional party
organization" for the 1960s (Mayhew 1986); a dummy variable for primary candidate en-
dorsement by the parties (Jewell 1984, 33-68); and a dummy variable for cohesive parties
that campaign on a collective, organized basis (Jewell and Olson 1982, 58, 165-66).
i i66 Kim Quaile Hill and Jan E. Leighley
Table 1. Party Ideology, Organization, and Competitiveness as Independent

Mobilizing Factors in U.S. State Elections
Absolute Ideology Relative Ideology

Variables Model Model
Constant 29.35*** 34.43***

(7.44) (9.83)
Presidential election 10.76*** 12.62***
(4.87) (6.21)
County party organizational strength -2.47 - 2.48
(-1.17) (-1.22)
Party competition 0.30*** 0.22**
(2.76) (2.04)
Democratic activist/mass ideological 6.09***
proximity (3.00)
Republican activist/mass proximity 0.42
(0.21)
Democratic activist/mass relative 3.39**
liberalism (2.58)
Republican activist/mass relative 2.37*
liberalism (1.90)
R 2 0.55 0.58
Adjusted R2 0.50 0.53
N 47 47
Note: Table entries are OLS regression coefficients with t-statistics in parentheses.
*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01.
alternative measures of organizational capability was related to turnout.

We thus conclude that party competitiveness, but not party organiza-
tional strength, enhances turnout in U.S. gubernatorial elections.
Our findings with respect to party ideology provide support for only
one of the two conceptualizations discussed above-and for some unan-
ticipated results even in that instance. The first equation includes a mea-
sure of the ideological proximity of each party's activists to its mass
followers. For both measures, higher values indicate activists who are
less representative (i.e., activists who are ideologically more distant from
the party's mass membership). Hence, this measure of ideological prox-
imity is expected to be negatively associated with turnout. However, this
is not the case. Republican activist/mass ideological proximity is unre-
lated to turnout, while Democratic activist/mass ideological proximity is
positively associated with turnout. This suggests that turnout is higher in
states in which Democratic activists are ideologically more distant from

their mass followers.
This seemingly counterintuitive finding is explained by the results
for the second equation. Here the party ideology measures indicate how
liberal each party's activists are relative to their mass followers. The
results for this model show that states that have more liberal party activ-
ists have higher voter turnout. This finding is precisely what we expected
for the Democratic party, and it fits with observations like those of
Burnham (1982, 121-57) about the importance of one party adopting an
ideologically strong liberal posture.
Of course, we anticipated a negative relationship for Republican ide-
ology but instead find a positive relationship-more liberal Republican
leadership enhances turnout. Yet if we recall that GOP activists and mass
identifiers tend to be generally quite conservative, an alternative and
more accurate interpretation of the findings reported in Table 3 is indi-
cated. None of the state Republican parties has a body of activists with
an ideology score that is actually liberal; instead, a positive score on our
measure of Republican activist/mass relative ideology means that the
GOP activists are more moderate than the mass followers of their party-
not that they are actually liberal. And we suspect that such a circum-
stance is associated with relatively high turnout because the ideological
posture of the activists is relatively centrist and, hence, appealing to a
broader spectrum of the potential electorate. Independents and even
some Democratic party identifiers are probably also being mobilized in
greater numbers when the GOP elite is relatively more moderate.
We have demonstrated that party competition and party ideology-
measured as Democratic and Republican activist relative liberalism-are
associated with significantly higher turnout in state elections, while party
organizational strength has no effect. Yet this evidence is predicated on
the assumption that the relationships between state party characteristics
and aggregate turnout are the same in presidential and off-year elections.
That is, the coefficient estimates for organization, competitiveness, and
ideology are based on observations taken in both presidential and off-year
elections. While including the presidential dummy variable accounts for
mobilizing forces unique to presidential election years, it does not allow
for the effects of organization, competitiveness, and ideology to vary
across election types.
Yet we might expect the effects of these party attributes to vary in
just that way. In the absence of a presidential campaign, for example,
the importance of state party characteristics may be enhanced, while
during presidential campaigns, their importance may be overwhelmed.
To test this hypothesis, as well as to verify that the results reported in
I I68 Kim Quaile Hill and Jan E. Leighley
Table 2. The Relationships of Party Attributes to Turnout

in Presidential and Nonpresidential Elections
Presidential Election Year Interaction with:
Party Democratic Republican Party

Variables Competition Ideology Ideology Organization
Constant 35.18*** 40.94*** 41.55*** 41.96***

(9.55) (33.17) (34.66) (32.10)
Presidential election 5.54 16.49*** 11.87*** 8.34
(0.79) (4.24) (5.41) (1.22)
Party competition 0.21* -
(1.95)
Party competition inter- 0.19
action (0.91)
Democratic activist/ 5.32***
mass relative (2.91)
liberalism
Democratic activist/ -3.28
mass relative liberal- (- 1.14)
ism interaction
Republican activist/ - - 4. 10**
mass relative liber- (2.40)
alism
Republican activist/ - -0.73
mass relative liberal- (-0.31)
ism interaction
County party organiza- - - 0.34
tional strength (0.14)
County party organiza- - - 2.69
tional strength inter- (0.52)
action
R 2 0.44 0.47 0.48 0.34

Adjusted R2 0.41 0.44 0.44 0.30
N 50 47 47 50
*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01.
Table 1 are not artifacts of the varying effects of party attributes across
elections, we have specified models to test for differences in presidential
and off-year elections. These results are reported in Table 2.
We have estimated four separate equations based on the variables
used in the final model of Table 1: one for party competitiveness, one for
party organization, and one for each of the activist/mass relative liberal-
ism measures. Each equation includes three variables: a presidential elec-
tion year dummy variable, a party characteristic, and a multiplicative
interaction term composed of the presidential election variable and the

party characteristic. The estimate of interest is that of the interactive
term. A positive, significant estimate of the interaction term suggests that
the effect of the party characteristic is enhanced during presidential
election years, while a negative, significant estimate of the interaction
term suggests that the effect of the party characteristic is diminished in
presidential election years.
As reported in Table 2, each of the direct effects of the party attri-
butes remains the same as that estimated in Table 1, while the presidential
election dummy variable is significant in two out of the three models.
None of the interaction terms is significantly related to turnout, sug-
gesting that the model specification used in Table 1-with only a dummy
variable indicating the presence of a presidential election-is appropriate.
Substantively, this finding suggests that the relationships of state party
characteristics to turnout are unaffected by the presence of the presiden-
tial contest.
Interactive Effects of Ideology, Competition, and Organization
We next consider the extent to which the effect of any one party
characteristic on turnout is contingent on other party characteristics.
Thus far we have modeled the direct effects of party characteristics and
found that party competitiveness and activist/mass relative liberalism are
positively associated with turnout. However, as Burnham and others
have suggested, the mass electorate may respond to parties' mobilization
efforts only when the parties are both highly organized and ideologically
representative, or both competitive and ideologically representative. We
test for these interactive effects by adding to the final model presented
in Table 1 interactive terms between organization, activist/mass relative
liberalism, and competitiveness.
Based on these results, we find little support for the interactive party
attributes theses. Both ideology/organization interaction terms, as well
as the organization/competitiveness term, are insignificant in the models
estimated in Table 3 (equations 1, 2, and 5). These estimates provide
additional evidence that party organization has no effect-direct or indi-
rect-on voter turnout. In addition, the interaction term between Demo-
cratic activist/mass relative liberalism and competitiveness is also insig-
nificant (Table 3, equation 3), suggesting that the effects of competition
and Democratic ideology are not contingent on each other in the contem-
porary party system.
However, the interaction term between Republican activist/mass rel-
ative liberalism and competitiveness is significant and negative (Table 3,
equation 4). Assessing the effects of Republican activist/mass relative
liberalism thus requires considering both its direct and interactive effects.
q 0x r- 00 t n m tn t - t
Me v- M ? oo eq - 00 M e b eq v-
07=Et -oeNN
'e r-- * *n * - * n * l
wOo.******
- ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ -
Cd~~~~~~~~~C
v~~~~~~~C Q C OeN?eOOd
.O~~~~~~A a *
PARTY FORCES IN GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS 1171
The direct effect of Republican activist/mass relative liberalism, with

competitiveness held constant, is to increase turnout. The negative coef-
ficient for the interactive term suggests that the effect of more relatively
liberal Republican leadership on turnout is dampened in states with com-
petitive party systems. This finding is consistent with the argument that
turnout increases when the parties take distinctive ideological or policy
positions: as Republican leadership moderates toward the Democratic
party, the incentives to vote are reduced. However, only in competitive
states are these reduced incentives translated into lower turnout.
Ideology, Competitiveness, and Organization

in the Contemporary Electoral Context
We also wish to know how important these party attributes are for
turnout once one has taken account of the principal features of the con-
temporary election context. Two features of that context are especially
important: candidate campaign spending and voter registration require-
ments. As noted above, campaign spending is a particularly good indica-
tor of candidate-centered election phenomena that are often alleged to
have displaced the parties. The importance of spending by individual
candidates can best be modeled by introducing this independent variable
directly into a regression model that includes party competition and
activist/mass relative liberalism, the party characteristics reported as sig-
nificant in Table 1. Table 4 presents the estimates for this model, esti-
mates that indicate that the findings reported in Table 1 are quite robust.
Each party characteristic remains significant and positive after controlling
for candidate spending. The estimate for campaign spending-the institu-
tional factor often considered to be most effective in stimulating turn-
out-is also significant (p < 0.10) and positive. Hence, party competition
and activist/mass relative liberalism stimulate turnout, independently of
the mobilizing effects of candidate campaign spending.
Finally, we consider whether voter registration requirements condi-
tion the effects of party attributes and campaign spending on turnout.
The preceding models implicitly assume that the prospects for enhancing
turnout-by whatever mechanism-are equal across all states. Yet to
the extent that registration requirements restrict the potential pool of
voters or result in demographically different pools in different states,
that assumption is untenable. One might well hypothesize, instead, that
mobilizing institutions will influence turnout to a different degree in states
with relatively restrictive registration and voting requirements as opposed
to those with more modest registration barriers. Alternatively, different
party characteristics may be important for turnout in the two kinds of
states.
Ideally, we would test this hypothesis by estimating the model
1172 Kim Quaile Hill and Jan E. Leighley
Table 4. Party Mobilization of Voter Turnout,

Controlling for Campaign Spending
Variables
Constant 32.74***
(8.79)
Presidential election 12.78***
(6.40)
Party competition 0.18*
(1.88)
Democratic activist/mass relative liberalism 3.30**
(2.55)
Republican activist/mass relative liberalism 2.63**
(2.13)
Campaign spending 0.001*
(1.71)
R 2 0.60
Adjusted R2 0.55
N 47
Note: Table entries are OLS regression coefficients with t-statistics in

parentheses.
*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01.
presented in Table 4 with the addition of a series of interaction variables

consisting of each party attribute and campaign spending multiplied by a
dummy variable distinguishing more restrictive voter registration require-
ment states from less restrictive states. Since this procedure would intro-
duce a large number of predictor variables relative to cases, as well as
complicate interpretations of the substantive results, we chose instead to
estimate the basic model reported in Table 4 separately for states with
low (below the median) and high (above the median) voter registration
requirements. This approach produces less precise estimates of model
parameters than one that uses the dummy variable interactions, but none-
theless produces the same separate regressions for the two subsets of
states (Gujarati 1988, 442-48).
Table 5 shows that the effects of both campaign spending and party
attributes on voter turnout are contingent on state voter registration re-
quirements. In states with less restrictive requirements, Democratic
activist/mass relative liberalism, Republican activist/mass relative liber-
alism, and campaign spending significantly increase turnout in guber-
natorial elections. In states with more restrictive voter registration
PARTY FORCES IN GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS I 173
Table 5. Voter Registration Requirements as Limiting Conditions

on Party Mobilization of Voter Turnout
States with Voter Registration

Requirements
Variables Less Restrictive More Restrictive
Constant 39.57*** 29.67***

(8.72) (6.44)
Presidential election 9.21*** 15.68***
(4.12) (5.82)
Party competition -0.02 0.25*
(-0.14) (2.01)
Democratic activist/mass 2.82** - 1.22
relative liberalism (2.38) (-0.48)
Republican activist/mass 3.48** 1.06
relative liberalism (2.60) (0.53)
Campaign spending 0.002** 0.0001
(2.61) (-0.16)
R2 0.68 0.71
Adjusted R2 0.59 0.63
N 23 24
*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01.
requirements, none of these variables is significant, though party compe-

tition is significantly related to overall turnout. These findings suggest
that activist/mass relative liberalism and campaign spending can enhance
turnout only where the legal system facilitates voter participation. On the
other hand, political parties enhance turnout in states with more restric-
tive registration requirements only through the more long-term dynamics
of party competition. Hence, these findings alter those initially reported
in Table 4: party attributes and campaign spending mobilize voter turn-
out, but they do so in different ways in different legal frameworks.
Furthermore, the presence of a presidential election significantly en-
hances turnout in both types of states, but it does so to a lesser degree
in states with modest registration requirements. In such states, more of
the mobilizing forces are also significantly related to turnout. Thus, the
effect of voter registration requirements is both direct, by constraining
individuals' abilities to register and vote, as well as indirect, by limiting
the effectiveness of mobilizing institutions.
Conclusions
In a period when most observers question the relevance of traditional

political parties, we find that the parties and party systems play a funda-
mental role in mobilizing voter turnout in the United States. Party compe-
tition and party ideology, in particular legal contexts, enhance turnout
in gubernatorial elections. Moreover, the parties' effectiveness is not
eclipsed by the mobilizing institutions thought to dominate electoral poli-
tics today: presidential elections and candidate campaign spending.
Yet our conclusion that the parties are vital political institutions in
mass electoral politics is quite different from the findings of recent studies
of party organization. We find no direct effect of party organization on
voter turnout. It may be true that the major parties command notable
resources and marshal substantial mobilization efforts. Such efforts may
produce a higher vote share for organizationally advantaged parties, but
they apparently do not enhance mobilization in general.
Thus, a principal contribution of this paper is to distinguish which
particular aspects of parties and party systems independently influence
mobilization. While previous research has provided evidence that a num-
ber of these characteristics enhance turnout, none has examined the
simultaneous impact of organization, competition, and ideology. Our
finding that party organization has no independent relationship to turnout
underscores the importance of such a multivariate test. At the same time,
we are not particularly surprised by the latter finding. Previous research
has generally found only a modest effect of party organization on turnout,
usually based on bivariate analyses (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1992, 79).
We have demonstrated how this modest effect disappears when ideology
and competitiveness are also considered.
We also identify for the first time conditions under which party and
other electoral phenomena will be more or less important for mobiliza-
tion. In particular, the influence of party ideologies, party competition,
and campaign spending on voter turnout is dependent on the nature of
state voter registration requirements. In states with more restrictive voter
registration requirements, only party competition enhances turnout. In
states with less restrictive registration requirements, party ideology and
campaign spending affect turnout, but party competition does not. One
could interpret these findings to mean that party ideology and campaign
spending function as short-term influences on voter turnout, while party
competition is a long-term characteristic of a state's politics that encour-
ages broader participation of the electorate.
More broadly, these findings generally support Burnham's (1982)
perspective on party mobilization and, in particular, provide evidence
about the role of ideology in enhancing turnout. We suspect, as well, that

our particular findings about the importance of party ideology are quite
compatible with Burnham's concern for the mobilization of different so-
cial classes within the electorate. The importance of Democratic party
liberalism is likely based on its appeal to working- and lower-class voters
whose interests might otherwise not be represented in election contests.
The customarily low turnout rates of lower-status individuals may reflect
the limited representation typically provided such individuals in contem-
porary elections. Relative liberalism on the part of Democratic activists
would appear to enhance this representation and thus stimulate higher
aggregate turnout.
Relatively moderate Republican activists, on the other hand, proba-
bly enhance turnout because of their attractiveness to other class in-
terests. A highly conservative GOP, first, is likely to appeal most to
upper-class voters whose participation in elections tends to be consis-
tently high regardless of such stimuli. When GOP activists are instead
relatively moderate, they broaden the appeal of the party to more centrist
individuals and groups, who are undoubtedly more numerous than the
extremely conservative GOP mass identifiers. Aggregate turnout is then
enhanced because of the ideological proximity of the party to such pro-
spective voters.
Finally, one broad implication of the findings regarding voter regis-
tration requirements deserves mention. As states adopt less restrictive
voting requirements, the relationship between party competition and
turnout will likely be diminished. At the same time, party ideology and
campaign spending could take on more important roles in mobilizing turn-
out in U.S. elections. Thus, to the extent that party elites are cognizant
of these dynamics, party vitality should be sustained in the future by
modifications of voter registration requirements in the states. And if party
elites were actively to redefine party interests to structure new electoral
coalitions, significantly higher levels of voter turnout may result as well.
Manuscript submitted 19 October 1992

Final manuscript received 17 February 1993
APPENDIX
Descriptive Statistics for the Principal Variables
Variable Mean Std. Dev. Minimum Maximum
Average turnout in gubernatorial

elections, 1980-86 45.3 9.1 28 65
Average county party organization
strength 0.129 0.52 - 1.04 1.51
Party competition, 1980-86 31.8 10.7 10 50
Ideological distance between party
activists 6.3 1.7 2.3 10.9
Democratic activist/mass ideological
proximity 0.55 0.48 0.0 2.3
Republican activist/mass ideological
proximity 0.68 0.52 0.05 1.99
Democratic activist/mass relative
liberalism 0.08 0.73 - 1.1 2.3
Republican activist/mass relative
liberalism 0.05 0.86 -2.0 1.8
Gubernatorial campaign spending/voting
age population 2,865.6 2,692.8 182.4 17,243.8
Restrictiveness of the voter registration
system 123.8 55.4 0 200
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Party Ideology, Organization, and Competitiveness-Hill1993

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Party Ideology, Organization, and Competitiveness as Mobilizing Forces in Gubernatorial

Kim Quaile Hill, Texas A&M University

Using aggregate data on statewide turnout, we examine the relative importance of

Political parties are widely acknowledged to be critical actors in the

Party Mobilization in the United States

Patterson and Caldeira (1983) offer the most persuasive evidence on

and Caldeira (1984) demonstrate that the combined organizational

Data and Measures

To examine the various relationships discussed above, we employ

of the local Democratic and Republican organization scores reported by

ideological extremity of the party elites is hypothesized to enhance aggre-

interactive measure that is created by multiplying the standard closing

Ideology, Organization, and Competitiveness in U.S. Elections

Evidence regarding the independent relationships of party ideology,

5The alternative measures included separate indices of Democratic and Republican

Table 1. Party Ideology, Organization, and Competitiveness as Independent

Absolute Ideology Relative Ideology

Constant 29.35*** 34.43***

*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01.

alternative measures of organizational capability was related to turnout.

states in which Democratic activists are ideologically more distant from

Table 2. The Relationships of Party Attributes to Turnout

Presidential Election Year Interaction with:

Party Democratic Republican Party

Constant 35.18*** 40.94*** 41.55*** 41.96***

R 2 0.44 0.47 0.48 0.34

*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01.

interaction term composed of the presidential election variable and the

Interactive Effects of Ideology, Competition, and Organization

The direct effect of Republican activist/mass relative liberalism, with

Ideology, Competitiveness, and Organization

Table 4. Party Mobilization of Voter Turnout,

Note: Table entries are OLS regression coefficients with t-statistics in

*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01.

presented in Table 4 with the addition of a series of interaction variables

Table 5. Voter Registration Requirements as Limiting Conditions

States with Voter Registration

Variables Less Restrictive More Restrictive

Constant 39.57*** 29.67***

*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01.

requirements, none of these variables is significant, though party compe-

In a period when most observers question the relevance of traditional

about the role of ideology in enhancing turnout. We suspect, as well, that

Manuscript submitted 19 October 1992

Variable Mean Std. Dev. Minimum Maximum

Average turnout in gubernatorial

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Constant 29.35* 34.43*

p < .10; p < .05; p < .01.

Constant 35.18* 40.94* 41.55* 41.96*

p < .10; p < .05; p < .01.

p < .10; p < .05; p < .01.

Constant 39.57* 29.67*

p < .10; p < .05; p < .01.