Are Primary Elections Responsible for Polarization in Congress?

Do members of Congress vote differently when they are worried about winning their party’s primary election? On today's episode, Ethan and Wioletta interview Anthony about his forthcoming paper, “Do Primary Elections Exacerbate Congressional Polarization?,” which is forthcoming from the Journal of Politics. Using detailed voting data and the natural variation in primary election timing across states, Anthony and his co-author, Shu Fu, show that primaries play a surprisingly small role in pushing lawmakers to the ideological extremes—accounting for only about 1% of congressional polarization.