Electoral equilibria with restricted strategies

We construct a spatial election model in which candidates inherit initial positions in the strategy space, presumably from previous political activity, and they are restricted to strategies close to their initial positions. We establish sufficient conditions for the existence of an equilibrium. The equilibrium need not entail an expectation of a zero plurality for each candidate. We then apply this model to a sequence of elections in which a series of opposition candidates challenge incumbents. Given certain regularity conditions, the result will be an apparent incumbency advantage, corresponding to that observed in recent congressional elections.     

You just made it: Individual incumbency advantage under Proportional Representation

Using close election outcomes, we identify a personal effect of incumbency on the probability of seeking election, and seeking and winning office in subsequent elections for elected officials in an Open List Proportional System. In many cases Danish local elections creates an as-if random distribution of candidates that are elected or not, which is an ideal setting for a Regression Discontinuity design. The incumbency advantage has been studied to a great extent, though primarily in pluralistic electoral systems, while more recent studies have extended the scope to Proportional Representation systems. This study adds to this budding literature by showing an advantage in a new context and focusing on candidate level electoral returns under conditions where candidates are arguably least likely to benefit from incumbency.     

Campaign resources and electoral success: Evidence from the 2002 French parliamentary elections

We examine the factors that improve the candidates’ likelihood of winning an election by drawing on information from campaign resources used by candidates running in the 2002 French parliamentary election. The main effects that we wish to analyze are the candidates’ gender, political affiliation and possible incumbency. We find that the contributions the candidates received and their political affiliations determine their acceding to the second round of the elections. But surprisingly once they make it to the second round, the contributions cease to be relevant; only the candidates’ gender, incumbency and the actual spending rather than the contribution levels matter.     

Do barriers to candidacy reduce political competition? Evidence from a bachelor’s degree requirement for legislators in Pakistan

In the 2002 election, candidates for Pakistan’s federal legislature had to possess at least a bachelor’s degree. This policy disqualified 60 out of the 207 incumbent legislators from running for election again. Using a difference-in-differences approach with panel data on all electoral constituencies in Pakistan, I find that this ballot access restriction does not affect political competition across all constituencies with disqualified incumbents equally. Stronger political competition is defined as a larger number of candidates contesting election, a smaller vote share and vote margin for the winning candidate, and a less concentrated candidate field, as measured by a Herfindahl–Hirschman index (HHI) of vote shares. Competition declined significantly in constituencies where the disqualified incumbent belonged to a small party and where literacy levels were lower (signifying a smaller pool of substitute candidates). However, political competition increased in areas where the disqualified incumbent was stronger in terms of his winning vote margin.     

Electoral Uncertainty and the Macroeconomy: the Evidence from Canada

The partisan advantage and incumbency advantage versions ofthe rational partisan business cycle model are tested. Bothmodels assume agents form weighted averages of partisaninflation rates during an election period, and differ only inhow the weights are formed which alters the form of businesscycles. The partisan advantage assumes fixed weightsdesignated for both major parties in each election, whereasthe incumbency advantage model assumes fixed weights forwhichever is the incumbent and opposition party in eachelection. The symmetric representation assumes each electionis a toss-up. Strongest support is found for a temporarysymmetric effect on the level of output, but none of themodels are supported for temporary electoral changes in growthor unemployment rates.     

The Citizen Candidate Model: An Experimental Analysis

Citizen candidate models represent a significant advance in the analysis of public choice. They provide added realism to models of endogenous policy formation, relate the number of candidates to the benefits and costs associated with electoral competition and support equilibria with differentiated candidate positions, even with a multidimensional policy space. In this paper, experimental methods are utilized to test two of the model’s equilibrium predictions. The results support the prediction that an increase in the net benefits to winning an election increases the number of citizens entering electoral contests. When the net benefits to winning an election are low, the results support the prediction that the only candidate has the median preference. Further, the results suggest that when net benefits are high, two members of the electorate with preferences close to and symmetric about the median enter the election, although convergence to this equilibrium takes time. Because entry is costly, having multiple candidates lowers group payoffs and may be seen as inefficient.     

Valence,Elections, and Legislative Institutions

To the degree that voters care about competence, expertise, and other valence characteristics of their representatives and political parties care about winning elections, parties have an incentive to signal that their legislators have such characteristics. We construct a model of parties, motivated by both reelection and by policy, that attempt to signal individual incumbents' valences to voters through the assignment of these members to positions of authority. The model illustrates how electorally motivated party leaders will have an incentive to promote less competent incumbents than they would if voters did not make inferences from promotion decisions. We derive the model's empirical implications and test them with original data on the careers of Chilean senators serving between 1998 and 2013. In support of the model's insights, we find that promotion to a leadership position is an effective signal to voters only if the promoted incumbent has extreme views relative to the party.     

The Campaign Value of Incumbency: A New Solution to the Puzzle of Less Effective Incumbent Spending

A puzzle in research on campaign spending is that while expenditure is positively related to votes won, this effect is far more strongly, or even exclusively, enjoyed by challengers rather than by incumbents. We unearth a new explanation for the puzzle, focusing on the hidden, yet variable, campaign value of office perquisites which incumbents deploy in their campaigns to win votes. When these variable office benefits are unobserved, then the effect is to make observed incumbent spending less effective than spending by challengers. Using data from the 2002 Irish general election, where incumbency was assigned a variable campaign value and included in declared campaign spending, we are able to demonstrate this hidden incumbency effect and estimate its relationship to electoral success, in terms of overall votes, share of votes, and probability of winning a seat. Contrary to previous research showing ineffective incumbent spending, we find that when the campaign value of office is also measured, public office value “spending” is not only very effective in winning votes, but also seems to be more effective than regular incumbent spending.     

The impact of incumbency on turnout. Evidence from Italian municipalities

We analyse how the presence of an incumbent among candidates at an election affects electoral turnout. We use a rich data set which provides information on the results of Italian municipal elections over the period 1993–2011. We find that the impact of incumbency is heterogeneous across geographical areas: incumbency produces a positive effect on turnout in the South of Italy, whereas we find a negative and statistically significant effect in the North. We speculate that the north-south divergence is related to differences in social capital and in clientelistic relationships established by incumbent politicians. Our conjecture finds support when we look separately at municipalities in the lower and upper quartile of the social capital distribution and at municipalities with high or low densities of organised crime.     

The effect of relative economic performance on the outcome of gubernational elections

This study finds that one of the most important determinants of election outcomes in gubernatorial elections is the voter's familiarity with the candidates. When an incumbent governor seeks re-election, his party's share of the vote increases by about 7.3 percentage points, ceteris paribus. Likewise, when a former candidate represents the opposition party, the incumbent party's share of the vote decreases by about three percentage points, ceteris paribus. The electoral history of the state also has a significant effect on the share of the vote received by the incumbent party.The major finding of this study is that state economic conditions exert only a weak influence on the outcome of gubernatorial elections. Assuming that voters are rational, a major implication of this finding is that voters do not view a governor as being able to substantially influence a state's economy. If, during a gubernatorial campaign, voters view the candidates as having little or no control over the state economy they will evaluate candidates on the basis of non-economic positions.     

Using Multimember District Elections to Estimate the Sources of the Incumbency Advantage

In this article we use a novel research design that exploits unique features of multimember districts to estimate and decompose the incumbency advantage in state legislative elections. Like some existing related studies we also use repeated observations on the same candidates to account for unobserved factors that remain constant across observations. Multimember districts have the additional feature of copartisans competing for multiple seats within the same district. This allows us to identify both the direct office-holder benefits and the incumbent quality advantage over nonincumbent candidates from the same party. We find that the overall incumbency advantage is of similar magnitude as that found in previous studies. We attribute approximately half of this advantage to incumbents' quality advantage over open-seat candidates and the remainder to direct office-holder benefits. However, we also find some evidence that direct office-holder benefits are larger in competitive districts than in safe districts and in states with relatively large legislative budgets per capita.     

Electoral contexts that assist voter coordination: Ballot position effects in Poland

Hypothetically, in the open list PR system, all contestants, independently of their ballot position, have the same chance of winning a mandate. In practice, candidates placed at the top of the ballot enjoy a large surplus of votes. Their success can be explained by the primacy effect, in which the first ballot position acts as a focal point. The analysis of 6187 candidates running for the Polish Sejm in 2007 finds not only significant gains for top candidates, but that proximity to the upper end of the ballot likewise matters. It correspondingly discovers a weak benefit for candidates placed last on the list. Other sources of candidate advantage such as incumbency, capital city effect, age and gender are also investigated.     

Policy representation of constituency interests

This paper examines two aspects of congressional representation: the responsiveness of House candidates to constituency opinion and the effect of candidate positions on House election outcomes. For both Democratic- and Republican-held seats, constituency liberalism (as measured by the constituency's vote for McGovern in 1972) is strongly related to the liberalism of incumbent candidates but less so to the liberalism of challengers. House election outcomes are visibly influenced by the positions of incumbent candidates but not those of nonincumbent candidates. The paper argues that elections contribute significantly to achieving congressional representation. Candidate positions are measured from a 1974 CBS survey of all major House candidates.     

Risk Attitudes and the Incumbency Advantage

Explanations for the incumbency advantage in American elections have typically pointed to the institutional advantages that incumbents enjoy over challengers but overlook the role of individual traits that reinforce this bias. The institutional advantages enjoyed by incumbents give voters more certainty about who incumbents are and what they might do when (and if) they assume office. We argue that these institutional advantages make incumbents particularly attractive to risk-averse individuals, who shy away from uncertainty and embrace choices that provide more certainty. Using data from 2008 and 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we show that citizens who are more risk averse are more likely to support incumbent candidates, while citizens who are more risk accepting are more likely to vote for challengers. The foundations of the incumbency advantage, we find, lie not only in the institutional perks of office but also in the individual minds of voters.     

Campaign advertising and political ambiguity

This paper develops a model to explain candidates' strategic decisions to provide or withhold information about policy positions in the course of an election campaign. The analysis treats this problem as a game of imperfect information. Attention is focused on modeling voter suspicion of candidates whose positions are ambiguous. Specific numerical examples illustrate that candidate decisions about providing information via informative advertising depend upon candidate policy preferences, campaign fund endowments, partisan reputations, and incumbency status. The model also provides theoretical underpinnings for empirical findings regarding the effects of campaign advertising.     

Money,candidates, and mayoral elections

In this paper, we extend a well-trod line of research from congressional and state-level elections—the electoral impact of campaign expenditures and candidate characteristics—to a relatively understudied context, urban mayoral elections. Using a sample of large U.S. cities, we provide evidence that mayoral elections are very similar to elections at other levels of office: there is a tremendous incumbency advantage, one that is overcome only with great effort; campaign spending is closely tied to incumbent vote share but it is challenger rather than incumbent spending that seems to drive outcomes; and challengers are hopelessly outspent. In addition, we find that the effect of local economic conditions on incumbent success is mediated by challenger spending and that incumbent candidates fare better in racially diverse settings.     

No sorting,no advantage: Regression discontinuity estimates of incumbency advantage in Japan

While the existing literature has identified a sizable incumbency advantage in single-member district (SMD) races in developed democracies, we argue that some political and institutional contexts of Japan's Lower House elections would undermine the incumbency advantage. Our regression discontinuity (RD) analysis indeed shows little advantage, and further examination suggests this as largely due to the “best-loser” provision in Japan's mixed-member system, which gives a loser of SMD competition a chance to be a “resurrected” incumbent. We also show no evidence of sorting – i.e., systematic difference between bare winners and bare losers – in close SMD races and thus add further evidence to support the methodological argument that the election RD analysis is a viable and promising research design.     

Thinking alike: two pathways to leadership-candidate opinion congruence

This paper seeks to explain why party candidates and their party leadership have congruent policy positions or not. Despite its importance as a way through which parties are able to behave as a unitary actor, this congruence has never been studied as a dependent variable. We seek to fill this void in the literature. Our results suggest that leadership-candidate congruence comes about through two mechanisms: selection and learning. With selection, the party leadership aims to get those candidates elected whose policy preferences are congruent with the party line. Learning occurs through the process of socialization in which candidates assume the views of the party they work and candidate for as their own under. This happens under the pressure of cognitive dissonance. If a candidate learns about the position of the leadership and notices that they are incongruent, they may feel discomfort and change their opinion to be congruent with the party.     

Being Certain Versus Being Right: Citizen Certainty and Accuracy of House Candidates' Ideological Orientations

Research on voting behavior has been reinvigorated by focusing on citizens' certainty of candidates' issue positions and ideological orientations. According to this perspective, citizens are inclined to support candidates whom they are confident possess attributes they deem important. Analysis of citizens' perceptual certainty and perceptual accuracy of 1994, 1996, and 1998 House candidates' ideological orientations reveals that many candidate characteristics (incumbency, fiscal resources) that enhance certainty fail to improve perceptual accuracy. The electoral consequence of this fact is that candidates endowed with these resources benefit from the importance of certainty to citizens without paying the electoral costs of clarifying their issue positions and ideological orientations. Similarly, several characteristics of citizens that lead to certainty reduction—gender and caring about the outcome of the election, for example—fail to improve perceptual accuracy. The implications of the empirical findings for the role of citizens' assessments of certainty in the voting decision for producing an informed electorate are considered here.     

The conditioning role of polarization in U.S. senate election outcomes: A direct-election era & voter-level analysis

Recent work finds that a decline in the incumbency advantage coincides with the rise of partisanship as a determinant of congressional electoral outcomes. While this work updates our view of congressional elections, it is unclear if this holds in the more candidate-centered and high-information electoral context of the U.S. Senate. In this paper, I address these two considerations by evaluating a theory positing that polarization conditions the influence of incumbency and partisanship as Senate election determinants. Using data on the entire direct-election Senate era and survey data, this paper finds that: (1) polarization provides a partisan advantage for candidates running in states in which they are members of the partisan majority and (2) polarization positively conditions the incumbency advantage for Senators representing states that favor the other party. These findings suggest that Senators may still successfully cultivate a personal brand in the face of growing ideological differences between the parties.