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Using data from the 1980-1992 National Election Studies, this paper compares the policy & partisan views of three Sets of voters: (1) "loyal" Democrats who voted for their party's presidential candidates; (2) "defecting" Democrats who voted for Ronald Reagan or George Bush; (3) loyal Republicans. During the 1980s, the defectors were commonly labeled "Reagan Democrats," & the conventional wisdom at the time was that Reagan Democrats were disenchanted with the liberal tilt of the "national" Democratic Party, especially on issues related to race & redistribution. The analysis shows that defecting Democrats were indeed strikingly conservative on racial policy questions, & in some cases were statistically indistinguishable from Republicans. At the same time, Reagan Democrats expressed preferences on "safety net" issues like Social Security that put them squarely within the Democratic Party mainstream. In response to open-ended questions asking what they liked or disliked about the two major parties, Reagan Democrats offered generally favorable appraisals of their party. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

Incumbent advantage is the defining feature of campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives. This includes press coverage, for which studies indicate that incumbents generally attract more coverage, & more favorable coverage, than their opponents. However, research on media coverage of House elections has overlooked one type of House contest: races in which incumbents compete against each other because of redistricting. This article examines newspaper coverage of one such campaign, the 2002 Lynn Rivers-John Dingell campaign for the Democratic nomination in Michigan's new Fifteenth Congressional District. The authors find some evidence of a "home field advantage" in press coverage, where Rivers & Dingell received varying forms of favorable coverage in papers serving their old constituencies. At the same time, the fact that the new Fifteenth encompassed more of Dingell's former district than River's former district, some important advantages in press coverage worked in his favor. Frames promoted by the Dingell campaign generated more favorable coverage than did frames pitched by the Rivers campaign. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 16 References. [Copyright 2004 Sage Publications, Inc.]

Examines newspaper coverage of the 2002 campaign for the Democratic nomination in Michigan's new Fifteenth Congressional District, in which redistricting caused two incumbents to face each other.