The electoral impact of casework

Abstract There is no doubt that legislators assume casework has an important political impact, but the evidence that such service can be used to win electoral support from grateful constituents is mixed. The research reported here offers a model to assess the overall electoral impact of casework. The model suggests that while the impact does benefit the incumbent, it varies as a function of voter partisanship. In particular, the recognition effect of casework is the dominant one for incumbent partisans, while improved incumbent evaluation accounts for more of the overall impact among challenger partisans and Independents.