Better understanding the relationship between the results for the U.S. House of Representatives and for state executive offices could potentially be useful in predicting outcomes if a significant relationship is present and if one has more information about either the election for the U.S. House of Representatives candidate or the state executive office candidate. To better understand this relationship, election results were analyzed using regression models for three upper Midwest states - Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota - to compare the outcomes of the state executive office elections and the U.S. House of Representative elections. Additionally, median income was included in the models to see if this affected the relationship. Each state had a statistically significant relationship between the results of the state executive offices and the U.S. House of Representatives. Median income either was not statistically significant or not practically significant in overall effect on the relationship.

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This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of midterm U.S. House elections using a multi-level research design. At the aggregate-level, multiple regression analysis is used to examine the variables that affect seat loss for the president’s party. This integrates, updates and extends the extant literature of the topic, and offers a means of explaining and predicting seat losses by the president’s party in the U.S. House. To further probe the findings at the aggregatelevel, the thesis develops a pooled cross-sectional model of individual-level vote choice in midterm U.S. House elections using data from the American National Election Studies (1982- 2002) and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study for the 2006 and 2010 midterm elections. Findings suggest that variables measuring the performance of the economy and realignment of the South toward the Republican Party affect seat loss at the aggregate level. However, at the individual level, economic evaluations exerted little influence on vote choice, above and beyond party identification, although perceptions of the national economy did appear to influence vote choice in the 2006 and 2010 elections. Future research might incorporate the strategic politician thesis into the explanatory scheme and move the analysis to elections for other political offices, such as U.S. Senate elections as well as state legislative and gubernatorial elections.

This research investigates the Twitter network sphere of the 112th U.S. House of Representatives and the 18th Korean National Assembly members. Drawing from social network analysis, this study explores and compares structural characteristics of each legislative political network at diverse network levels – legislative, party and personal network. Mapping these networks highlights the major features of these two elite political networks grounded in a new social medium. Findings indicate that U.S. and Korean lawmakers have created and are enjoying affluent and multi-layered digital networks. Dynamic legislative-body networks, strong party networks, and a variety of personal networks with diverse partisan and bipartisan relationships demonstrate how politicians are agile at using new mediums. This research confirmed that these newly created legislative networks go beyond partisanship. Complicated structures demonstrate active and mutual interactions among lawmakers, and the political networks with large numbers of bipartisan tie relationships indicate that the political elite communicate, interact, and build relationships with each other rather than remaining disconnected or isolated. This research revealed new types of leaders – digital opinion leaders – emerging from newly created digital legislative networks: the most connected lawmakers; lawmakers who have great potential to coordinate party politics; the most sought after leaders; and most sociable lawmakers. By examining lawmakers’ patterns of relationship building in the network, this research tests whether these relationships are dependent on party position, ruling or opposition, in the network. In turn, this provides evidence for different uses of this new medium by party position in both legislative bodies. Detailed examination of Twitter use by political elites in Korea and the U.S. illuminate how this new media platform is being adopted by and changing politics in two distinct social and cultural settings. This new political arena, a fully digitalized and networked sphere where dynamic competition and cooperation occurs between political elites, has emerged as one of the political battlefields in politics today. / text