In an era in which fewer and fewer congressional elections are competitive, why do candidates emerge at all to challenge entrenched incumbents who typically preside over very safe districts? In this book, Robert Boatright provides us with an explanation for this phenomenon. Not all challengers think they have a chance at beating the incumbent; in fact, most are quite aware that they will almost certainly lose and lose big in the general election. Furthermore, because these candidates are not running to win the election, they tend to run different campaigns, many of which are focused on highlighting certain issues and expressing certain political points of view. This is what the author means by “expressive politics.”

While I must admit that initially I was quite suspicious of an entire book examining losing candidates and their campaigns, I can now say that I found it interesting from start to finish and am very pleased that the author has provided us with a theoretical groundwork for understanding these candidates. Boatright's arguments are based upon dozens of interviews he personally conducted with challengers during the 1996 and 2000 election cycles. Using quotations and simple data analysis based on these interviews, the author is able to make a clear and convincing argument as to why long-shot challengers engage in a very different kind of campaign than what we might expect on the basis of positive theory.

Many modern congressional districts are drawn in such a way that one of the major parties has a clear advantage over the other. This makes for relatively dull general elections insofar as the incumbent will be from the dominant party in that district. After one or two terms, an incumbent should be able to consolidate power and fend off any serious general election competition. Gary Cox and Jonathan Katz call this phenomenon “strategic entry,” which is to say that any high-quality candidates from the party out of power are unlikely to emerge since their chances of winning the general election are slim to none. The single best predictor for how close a general election will be rests upon the quality of the challenger. In these districts then, other kinds of candidates emerge, and they have decided to campaign for office largely for reasons other than winning the election itself. This is quite important because it affects election outcomes: Incumbents' margins of victory are much higher than they would be otherwise; longshot campaigns rarely go negative against the incumbent and this allows the campaign to remain artificially civil. The author captures many of these sentiments in the dozens of interviews that he conducted. Some candidates run just so that the incumbent does not go unopposed in the general election. Others run to force the candidate to address certain issues or to spend more time in and attention on the district. These candidates also gauge their “success” in these elections not necessarily by the votes they garner but by the perception that they affected how the incumbent behaves on Capitol Hill or in the district.

Those challengers who have virtually no chance of beating the incumbent are those who engage in “expressive politics.” They will run to address issues that they think are important. Thus, they are consciously not competing for the median voter, as Anthony Downs would have us believe. This is not irrational for the author; quite the contrary. Boatright is extending the model to include an explanation for why they run and why they campaign on the issues that they do. For instance, through his interviews, he finds that those challengers who are competitive (the ones who end up either beating the incumbent or narrowly losing) are likely to move their issue positions toward the center during their campaign and never away from the center. On the other hand, many long-shot candidates do move away from the center of the district in terms of issue positions that they stress in their campaigns.

The author also considers the role that parties play in these elections and the challengers' view of the parties. Not surprisingly, most of these candidates did not receive help with money from the national party organizations since they were all but a lost cause. The competitive candidates who did receive money were typically quite grateful. But through the interviews, Boatright also asks about what other roles the parties played (at the national, state, and local levels). For instance, did the party exert pressure on the candidate to take certain policy positions to make winning the election more likely? For the expressive campaigners, the answer is usually “no,” although sometimes there are pressures, particularly from local party organizations, to toe the party line.

While I understand that Boatright is interested primarily in explaining electoral competition among the two major parties, I do feel that he missed an opportunity to incorporate some of the literature about third party candidates in American congressional elections. These people, even more so than hopeless major party challengers, run for expressive reasons. From the outset, they know that their chances of winning a seat in Congress are nil, yet not only do they run, but oftentimes they also face other serious obstacles in their campaign, such as getting their names on the ballot in the first place.

Up till Chapter 7, all of the analyses are based upon interviews of candidates from four midwestern states in the 1996 election. Chapter 7 is based on 14 interviews of candidates from four mid-Atlantic states in the 2000 election. I suspect that this was added to give the book some basis for comparison, but it came off as a bit forced and I am not sure how much more we learn from this chapter.

Despite these small quibbles with Expressive Politics, I think Boatright has made a strong contribution to the congressional elections literature. It provides us a better understanding about why folks choose to run in districts with no chance of winning, and why they choose to run campaigns that do not fit nicely with our notions of competition for the median voter.