Coattail Effect: The Unexpected Risks And Rewards

In this guide, well explore how the term coattail effect came into the national vocabulary, what campaigns have served as poignant examples of the coattail effect, and how we can approach this concept in the context of the 2024 elections. In this article i estimate the magnitude of such coattail effects from governors onto other concurrently elected statewide executive officers using a unique dataset of county election returns for all statewide executive office elections in the united states from 1987 to 2010. A potentially disastrous negative coattail effect was looming for both democratic house and senate races in 2024 as president bidens support dwindled following an abysmal debate performance. The coattail effect is a presidential candidates popularity driving voter turnout from their base or swaying independent voters, which helps their political partys candidate down the ballot. In the 2016 presidential election, for example, the republican establishment became increasingly concerned about its candidates for u. s.

Democrats, meantime, had their own polarizing candidate to worry about: Because coattails are overrated and, for all the talk about them, are largely a thing of the past. The two elections since fdrs second term in 1936 in which coattails genuinely were present took.