The research in this book will be of interest to scholars of Congress and campaigns & elections. It follows in a distinguished line of work on candidate emergence and adds new data of interest, and provides in-depth treatment of a central but specialized topic in the congressional elections literature. The book could also find some adoption as a supplementary text for upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses in elections, although the reviews support the book primarily as a research monograph.
Measuring and assessing candidate quality is a challenging feat to accomplish, and the author has undertaken to do this in a fresh and compelling way. To quote from Review E, "This book is by far the best effort I have seen at quantifying CQ, its impact on electoral outcomes, and fluctuations and trends in its incidence."
Author is an important and respected scholar of elections in the United States, co-author of Routledge's A Citizen's Guide to U.S. Elections (2015) and editor of Strategy, Money and Technology in the 2008 Presidential Election (Routledge 2011).
