The Effects of Social Structure on the 2002 Elections for State Representatives

The elections for state legislators that were held in the United States in 2002 are interesting in two respects. First of all, they were more competi-tive than any of the state legislative elections in the past forty-eight years. The Democratic Party had had more seats in state legislatures than the Republican Party had since the changes of legislators following the 1952 elections. However, the tables were turned in 2002. Republicans had more seats in the state legislatures than did Democrats even though the difference in the number of occupied seats between the GOP and the Democratic Party was narrow (Figure 1). Secondly, the 2002 elections were rare midterm elections because the percentage of state legislators belonging to the president’s party increased after the elections. The presidents ’ parties had tended to experience declines in the number of seats in state legislatures after midterm elections (Storey and Rose 2002, 12). The 2002 elections are an exception to this rule. Only the 2002 and 1990 elections resulted in an increase in the percentages of seats of the presidents ’ parties in both state Senates and Houses (Table 1). What determined the results of the 2002 elections? As explained above, the 2002 elections for state legislators were rare midterm elections in terms of a win for the president’s party. It has been pointed out that President George W. Bush’s popularity at that time gained votes for Republican candi-dates for state legislators (Storey and Rose 2002, 12). This view may be correct, though the president’s popularity does not completely explain why the 2002 elections provided the president’s party with more state legislative seats than before the midterm elections. As Table 2 shows, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton were popu-lar in the second halves of 1954, 1962, 1986, and 1998, respectively. However, the percentages of the presidents ’ parties ’ state senators and stat