3 ms·

Constituents that live in their districts, or constituents that get them re-elected?

• sliverstorm 15y ago
  Presumably they have figured out that acting in the interests of your constituents and getting re-elected are not mutually inclusive. Voting to please your party instead of your citizens gets you full party support, and as far as beating the other guy, it has been shown that campaign funding has an unsettlingly strong correlation to campaign victories. Making matters worse, voters tend to want conflicting things. For example, in general they want more government programs and also lower taxes. Making matters even more difficult, what voters say they want and what they actually want can be different stories. Schwarzenegger got elected on the premise that he was going to do certain things. He tried to do those things. He was shut down by everyone- including directly by the voters.
  • tomjen3 15y ago
    Sure to a point. But you don't see many politicians out of the bible belt who votes for abortions.
  • hucker 15y ago
    > it has been shown that campaign funding has an unsettlingly strong correlation to campaign victories. Do you have a citation on this? I recently read Freakonomics where the authors claimed to be able to prove this theory false, but I didn't look up their numbers.