Here, here and here I analyzed why I think the national swing against Republicans is likely to lead to a more than proportional shift in Congress in 2006, looking mainly at how shifts in perceived voter preferences feed back into member decisions to retire and challengers decisions to contest races. I had earlier promised a cite for the underlying logic of these arguments. Re-reading the book for my Congress class on Thursday, I realized that I was getting the basic idea from Cox and McCubbins’s fantastic book, Legislative Leviathan. It’s not an easy book, but it repays close reading.
