Gronke states his clear and decisive case early in the book. He cautions congressional and election scholars against comparing the “average” Senate race to the “average” House race. Senate races occur in states with population sizes that range from a million people to more than 30 million people. A Senate race that occurs in Delaware is bound to have far more in common with a House district race than it does with a Senate campaign in a state as large as Texas. Gronke argues that by lumping all Senate races into one category and taking the average, we hide the variation in Senate races that would show greater similarity to House campaigns.

For example, in Chapter 3, he counters one of the most commonly accepted claims that states are inherently more diverse than House districts. But in fact, it is by using a composite scale of diversity (e.g., Sullivan) that one might draw such a conclusion. Gronke chooses to use simple demographic data as separate indicators of diversity and clearly shows that some House districts are much more diverse than some states are. He does a very good job of demonstrating that it is not the de facto size of a state that makes Senate races more expensive or more competitive. Instead, such factors as concentration or dispersion of population, partisan distribution, and the number of media outlets all contribute to a competitive or noncompetitive campaign environment.

In Chapters 4 and 5, Gronke analyzes what he calls the “setting” for campaigns and tests his theory of a three-stage process that is the same for House and Senate campaigns. In brief, he argues that campaign intensity is a function of the choices of candidates to run for office, and those choices depend on the characteristics of the district or state, including partisan distribution, the overall strength of an incumbent, and the cost of advertising as a function of overall campaign spending. He argues that one reason that Senate races are more competitive is because the partisan distribution in most states is much more balanced than in most House districts, which are purposely delineated to favor one party or the other. If House districts were drawn to ensure partisan competition, then we might see a much higher number of competitive House races.

In Chapter 5, Gronke looks at the dynamics of campaigns, particularly what draws strong challengers and why Senate candidates spend more money than House candidates do. By his own admission, the results presented in this chapter do not fully support his contention about the similarity of House and Senate campaigns. A greater number of Senate races draw strong challengers than do House races, and in almost all cases, Senate candidates spend more money than House candidates. But he emphasizes his finding that individuals who consider running for a House or Senate office evaluate a similar set of political and district factors, even if the factors themselves vary.

In Chapter 6, Gronke uses the National Election Study and the Senate Election Study data on levels of voter information to show that voters do not hold fundamentally different expectations of senators, and that the actual type of knowledge that voters display about House and Senate candidates is similar in content. He finds this reassuring in that it shores up his theory that the voter essentially judges the “offices” in similar ways. The only flaw here is that he sets up a bit of a straw man test for the content of open-ended “like” evaluations. He proposes that voters should mention more foreign policy issues for senators than for House members, and that House members should be recognized more often for constituent and district service, whereas senators should be recognized more for their policy stands. It has been some time since that dichotomy actually operated in the House and Senate; members in both chambers now seek to make careers based on a wide range of issues.

Gronke is determined to remove the “institutional” effects of the House and Senate from the equation that determines the competitiveness of a campaign. He relies heavily on the measurement of challenger quality and campaign intensity; first he predicts the likelihood of a strong challenger in a House and Senate race, and then he uses campaign intensity in a later section to predict levels of voter awareness. This works very well for open seat races, and he is quite convincing in his argument that the elements of House and Senate campaigns for open seats are very similar indeed.

His model faces more scrutiny when it is applied to races with incumbents. A key missing element is a discussion of the effects of the length of term of office on the establishment of a secure electoral base. House members have shorter terms of office, and less individual power, but are typically buffered by a smaller geographic territory and favorable partisan distribution. Senators have a longer term of office, and much greater individual power, but they face a larger geographic district, a more competitive partisan distribution, and a second senator against whom they compete for attention. In other words, the House and Senate offer different prior conditions that lead up to a campaign cycle. Gronke does a good job of measuring some of these conditions, but he omits the impact of a House or Senate member's institutional behavior on his or her reputation. A strategic challenger enters a race he or she thinks can be won, which necessarily requires the perception that the incumbent is vulnerable. Using seniority as the only individual measure of vulnerability seems to me to be insufficient. Future researchers might consider adding measures of visibility for House and Senate members, perhaps using newspaper coverage in a given two year cycle, as well as legislative record to assess incumbent strength prior to the actual campaign season.

Along these lines, there is too little discussion of the type of campaigns that House and Senate candidates run. I agree with Gronke that by the time the campaign gets in full swing in the summer prior to an election, there are more similarities between House and Senate races than there are differences. The objective measures that he uses are convincing, but it also might be the case that the content of a Senate campaign is quite different from that of a House campaign. Senate candidates could engage in different activities, emphasize policy over local concerns, or run heavily on their prior elective experience, for example, as a governor. Take a situation where a House member runs for the Senate, either challenging an incumbent or in an open-seat race. Does that House member run an identical campaign to that previously run for the House, or is the campaign modified? If we knew which House members succeeded in their quests for the Senate and which ones failed, we might be able to better separate the district-characteristic and partisan-distribution effects of House and Senate seats from the actual campaign effects. For reference, two books, Challengers, Competition, and Reelection (1994) by Jonathan Krasno, and The Spectacle of U.S. Senate Campaigns (1999) by Kim Fridkin Kahn and Patrick Kenney, provide illustrative examples of campaign content, and along with Gronke's book, they give a comprehensive picture of the dynamics of House and Senate campaigns.

The importance of Gronke's research extends well beyond understanding congressional campaigns. It also provides a very good electoral rationale for the rise in intrachamber coordination within each of the major political parties. Current scholars of Congress are demonstrating that House and Senate party leaders work hard to coordinate their legislative agendas, across chambers, to emphasize their party's policy agenda. The Electorate, the Campaign, and the Office brings us closer to understanding what party leaders may already know: House and Senate campaigns are decided in a similar fashion, and on many of the same dimensions.