The Coattail Effect: Your Competitive Advantage

The coattail effect is when people support congressional candidates who are from the same party as the president. There is a theory that the presidential election filters down into local elections. Data does show that when a president comes in, it averages just over two senate seats and 16 seats in the house. Causal identification of coattail effects is challenging because popularity shocks typically affect parties in both concurrent elections. By coattail effects we understand that institutional and other features of one government level affect election outcomes at another government level.

Senate and house when it became clear donald trump was a formidable candidate. Democrats, meantime, had their own polarizing candidate to worry about: The coattail effect is a phenomenon that occurs when the popularity of a political candidate or leader results in higher voter counts for other candidates of the same party. Voters may hear of a candidate for congress riding on the presidents coattails, for instance. A franchisee will encounter coattail effects from the first day they enlist the franchise business, especially since the practices of both the franchisor and other franchisees will influence how the business is perceived in general.