Presidential Coattails
Presidential elections are held on the same date as those for all the seats in the United States House of Representatives, the full terms for 33 or 34 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate, the governorships in several U.S. states, as well as many state and local elections. Presidential candidates tend to bring out supporters who then vote for his party's candidates for those other offices. Members of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives are also more likely to be voted for on a year of the presidential election than a midterm. In effect, these other candidates are said to ride on his coattails.
Read more about this topic: United States Presidential Election
Famous quotes containing the words presidential and/or coattails:
“Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“When we think back to our forefathers, with their sedentary lives of forest-chopping, railroad-building, fortune-founding, their fox-hunting and Indian taming, their prancing about in the mazurka and the polka, with their coattails flying and their bustles bouncing, to say nothing of their all-day sessions with the port and straight bourbon,... we must realize that we are a nation, not of neurasthenics, but of sissies and slow-motion sports.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)