The second view for why incumbents are more likely to be reelected comes from incumbent behavior. Incumbents take advantage of the perquisites of office to enhance their electoral position over their challengers. .

             Linked to incumbency is the strategic politician's theory that the reason incumbents win so often is because they so often face weak challengers. Because incumbents can do things like advertising, casework and skillful position-taking, and because voters tend to vote based on name recognition, where incumbents dominate, strong challengers tend to avoid running.

             The strategic politician's theory incorporates money as well. If there is one thing we know about money in congressional elections, it is that money matters most to the challengers. Incumbents already have gotten their name before the voters; things like casework and franking allow them to do so while in office. But challengers tend to be less known. Successful challengers must spend money. But strategic donors avoid giving money to those they perceive as weak. Money accounts for even more of the incumbency advantage; most congressional challengers are perceived as so weak that they can't even get their hands on enough cash to run a campaign. Strategic donors also help make congressional elections self-fulfilling prophecies.

             Finally, the strategic politician's theory accounts for national results in addition to local ones. They have already seen how the quality of a challenger influences individual elections. But on the national scale, challenger quality is how national factors get linked to individual districts.

             Goals of members of Congress.

             Members of Congress tend to be quite purposeful. That is, most of what they do as.

             legislators are connected to some goal or goals. They do not always articulate their goals, but they usually can explain how particular decisions affect their own political objectives. .

             Moreover, they usually see connections between their goals and what they do every day.