PRESIDENTIAL COATTAILS AND OPEN SEATS - THE DISTRICT-LEVEL IMPACT OF HEURISTIC PROCESSING

Recent examinations of the coattail effect report conflicting evidence regarding the contemporary force of presidential coattails. This stud y contends that the failure to consider possible situational variance in coattail voting has contributed to this ambiguity. Interpreted from the perspective of cognitive theories of decision making, coattail vo ting can be seen as the behavioral consequence of citizens' reliance o n a specific cognitive efficiency mechanism, heuristic processing of s ource cues. This interpretation suggests that coattail voting should b e most prominent when House voters are relatively unfamiliar with the congressional nominees, or do not possess alternative voting cues. Dis trict-level aggregate data are examined for the 1976-1988 elections, a nd results support hypotheses suggested by the heuristic model. Specif ically, the impact of presidential coattails on congressional margins is shown to vary substantially, with the coattail effect exhibiting th e greatest prominence in open-seat congressional districts.