SCHEVE, Kenneth; TOMZ, Michael <br/><br/>
Electoral Surprise and the Midterm Loss in US Congressional Elections 

 - Cambridge :  Cambridge University Press,  July 1999 
<br/><br/> Alberto Alesina and Howard Rosenthal argue about the outcomes of US presidential elections accounts for two important features of the American political economy: the regular loss of votes experienced by the president's party in midterm congressional elections, and the systematis relationship between the party of the incoming president and macroeconomic performance. Scholars recently have begun conducting rigourous tests of the reationship between surprise and economic performance, but no similar empirical work exists on how surprise affects midterm elections. In this article, we offer the first proposition that electoral surprised moderate voters are about the outcome of a presidential election, the lower the probability that they will support the president's party in the following midterm contest