Political Behavior Blog

It seems likely to me that this phenomenon results from a Washington-centric focus of the national political press corps. It would be natural for would-be candidates to think about running for office more if there is press speculation about them running for office, and it is natural for the press to speculate about politicians they already know. Of course, governors -- who are more likely to win the presidency than are senators -- can gain national press attention, but it seems to me that this Washington-focus increases the attention paid to senators at the expense of more viable candidates from across the nation.

We can also safely predict that Alan Alda will lose his bid for the White House on West Wing since he is a Senator.

Could it be that senators have difficulty ascending to the presidency because they have a record on national policy that they must contend with? They must take positions that appeal to their previous constituency--homestaters. To appeal to a national audience, it may have been wiser to take different positions.

In many states governors are relatively weak. Also, the policies that they pursue may not be understandable by out-of-staters (since they don't understand local conditions or politics). Also, governors don't need to take positions on national issues until they are already formulating a national presidential strategy (see Mitt Romney's behavior in the past few months as an example). This lack of a comprehendible national position may be a comparative advantage for governors.

Also, governors have executive experience, while senators are legislative. This, too, may alter the views of the voters.

Charlie and I are on the same page. His hypotheses square with three of the four arguments in my original article. (The fourth argument had to do with the pool of candidates available to run.)

To be clear, my previous comment was more focused on why there are so many presidential hopefuls currently sitting in the U.S. Senate than why there are so few who have ascended to the presidency, at least in recent memory. I do agree that governors are more liklely to win, and for a variety of reasons very separate from the set of explanations put forth in my first comment.

In addition to the explanations put forward by commenter Charlie, I would also suggest the role of candidate traits, which have certainly become more important over as elections have increasingly become focused on individual candidates rather than platforms. It is easier to demonstrate some desirable traits (e.g. strong leadership) as a governor than as a senator.

Finally, I would add that governors have an easier time of constructing a record for the voters. Senators' records are comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of votes, but still give them little ability to claim credit for large policies or the current state of the nation. This gives opp researchers lots of material to attack, and senators' own campaigns less ability to take credit for the policy passed by the Senate as a whole, as was certainly seen in 2004. Conversely, governors only sign or veto legislation, but are generally given credit for the state of their state under their tenure, so that even weak governors (like Gov. George W. Bush, from a classic weak-governor state) can point to the success of their wholes state when attempting to construct a record for the voters to digest. Together, these factors work strongly in the favor of governors when competing against senators in either primary or general elections.