Research has shown that members of the United States Congress, especially in the House, exploit the abundance of electorally productive perquisites of office available to them. Yet research has not made clear the actual impact of this exploitation on constituents. In this study, I use actual member-constituent contacts in a congressional district to determine the effect of casework on incumbent evaluation. The results indicate that, although casework does benefit the incumbent, its impact is specified by partisanship. In addition, findings show that casework has a ripple effect on the formation of constituent opinion in the district.
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