Congress Is Struggling to Govern. Are Electoral Incentives to Blame?

Congress performs poorly by most measures, and a mere 15 percent of the public approves of our national legislature’s performance. The public’s discontent is understandable. Legislators have failed to debate and craft policies to address important issues such as immigration, healthcare, and housing affordability.

This report examines whether electoral incentives are to blame for Congress’s performance.

It first traces the constitutional design of congressional elections—two-year House terms, staggered six-year Senate terms—and the framers’ theory that regular elections would produce accountable, virtuous representation. The growth of the federal government’s role and other developments have left the hopes of James Madison and other creators of the US Constitution feeling remote from today’s campaigns and elections.

The report then reviews decades of research on how modern elections actually shape legislative behavior: the near-constant campaign cycle, soaring campaign costs, the rise of primaries dominated by unrepresentative and ideological voters, shrinking numbers of competitive districts and states, and intensifying partisan competition for narrow chamber majorities.

Together, these forces push legislators toward fundraising, symbolic position taking, and party loyalty rather than substantive lawmaking and oversight. Electoral incentives do discourage good governance, and structural electoral reforms—particularly changes to primaries—have merit. Nonetheless, no single reform will fix Congress. Electoral pressures are only one of several factors shaping Congress’s performance, and there are profound normative disputes over what constitutes a well-functioning Congress.