Barn Burners and Burn Out: The Effects of Competitive Elections on Efficacy and Trust.

Using ANES data from 1964 - 2000 we examine the impact of district-level competitiveness on political efficacy and trust in government. With an overwhelming number of the contests are uncompetitive, scholars have wondered what impact the lack of competition has had on voter attitudes. From a normative standpoint, many scholars have argued that competitive elections are essential to democracy because they make elected officials more responsive to the citizenry, raise awareness of important issues, engage voters in debates on issues of the day, and provide opportunities for turnover in representation, holding members of Congress accountable to the public. Theoretically, we should expect this to have a positive result on efficacy and trust.On the other hand, always being in a district where your co-partisan wins could increase satisfaction with your member of Congress while bitterly fought campaigns might become negative and turn voters off from the electoral process and both parties, resulting in lower levels of efficacy and trust. In this paper, we study the effects of electoral competition on citizen efficacy and trust in government by examining elections to the House of Representatives over the last 40 years. We find that competitive elections have both a positive and negative effect on efficacy, which has changed markedly over time. The time series data we employ and the different results by decade indicate that this issue is well worth re-examining. Although previous papers haven take up the relationship between competitiveness and efficacy or trust, few have asked whether the relationship has changed over time, let alone reversed. Our findings suggest this is the case. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]