State Population and the Electoral Success of U.S. Senators

Abstract

In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the number of people in a constituency is inversely related to the success of incumbent legislators. To conduct this test, we focused on the U.S. Senate, an ideal laboratory for an analysis of the effects of constituency size. The results indicate that senators from heavily populated states do indeed enjoy less of an incumbency advantage than senators from lightly populated states. We close by discussing why constituency size matters and by noting the contribution this finding makes to understanding the widely cited disparity between the electoral success of incumbent senators and representatives.