Accountability in State Legislatures: How Parties Perform in Oce and State Legislative Elections

Theories of political accountability suggest that governing parties and their members should be electorally punished when they perform poorly in oce. However, I nd little evidence of this type of accountability in state legislatures. State legislative elections are not referendums on state legislators’ own performance but are instead dominated by national politics. Presidential evaluations and the national economy matter more for state legislators’ elections than state-level economic conditions, state policy outcomes, or voters’ assessments of the legislature. Previous analyses of state legislative elections fail to consider which party controls the state legislature and whether voters know this information. When accounting for these factors, I discover that even when the legislature performs well, misinformed voters mistakenly reward the minority party. Thus, while state legislatures wield considerable policy-making power, elections are