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Much Ado About Nothing: RDD and the Incumbency Advantage

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  • Erikson, Robert S.
  • Rader, Kelly

Abstract

An influential paper by Caughey and Sekhon (2011a) suggests that the outcomes of very close US House elections in the postwar era may not be as-if random, thus calling into question this application of regression discontinuity for causal inference. We show that while incumbent party candidates are more likely to win close House elections, those who win are no different on observable characteristics from those who lose. Further, all differences in observable characteristics between barely winning Democrats and barely winning Republicans vanish conditional on which party is the incumbent. Any source of a special incumbent party advantage in close elections must be due to variables that cannot be observed. This finding supports the conclusion of Eggers et al. (2015) that Caughey and Sekhon’s discovery of lopsided wins by incumbents in close races is a mere statistical fluke.

Suggested Citation

  • Erikson, Robert S. & Rader, Kelly, 2017. "Much Ado About Nothing: RDD and the Incumbency Advantage," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 269-275, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:25:y:2017:i:02:p:269-275_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Ari Hyytinen & Jaakko Meriläinen & Tuukka Saarimaa & Otto Toivanen & Janne Tukiainen, 2018. "When does regression discontinuity design work? Evidence from random election outcomes," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(2), pages 1019-1051, July.
    2. Gregory J. Wawro & Ira Katznelson, 2020. "American political development and new challenges of causal inference," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 299-314, December.
    3. Bartnicki, Sławomir & Alimowski, Maciej & Górecki, Maciej A., 2022. "The anomalous electoral advantage: Evidence from over 17,000 mayoral candidacies in Poland," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    4. Dragan Filipovich & Miguel Niño-Zarazúa & Alma Santillán Hernández, 2021. "Voter coercion and pro-poor redistribution in rural Mexico," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-141, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Lewis, Blane D. & Nguyen, Hieu T.M. & Hendrawan, Adrianus, 2020. "Political accountability and public service delivery in decentralized Indonesia: Incumbency advantage and the performance of second term mayors," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    6. Kejia Hu & Sunil Chopra & Yuche Chen, 2021. "The Effect of Tightening Standards on Automakers’ Non‐compliance," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(9), pages 3094-3115, September.
    7. L. Jason Anastasopoulos, 2019. "Principled estimation of regression discontinuity designs," Papers 1910.06381, arXiv.org, revised May 2020.

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