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How Much of the Incumbency Advantage is Due to Scare-Off?

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  • Hall, Andrew B.
  • Snyder, James M.

Abstract

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the degree to which incumbents scare off challengers with previous officeholder experience. The estimates indicate a surprisingly small amount of scare-off, at least in cases where the previous election was nearly tied. As Lee and others have shown (and as we confirm for our samples) the estimated party incumbency advantage in these same cases is quite large—in fact, it is about as large as the average incumbency advantage for all races found using other approaches. Drawing from previous estimates of the electoral value of officeholder experience, we thus calculate that scare-off in these cases accounts for only about 5–7 percent of the party incumbency advantage. We show that these patterns are similar in elections for US House seats, statewide offices and US senate seats, and state legislative seats.

Suggested Citation

  • Hall, Andrew B. & Snyder, James M., 2015. "How Much of the Incumbency Advantage is Due to Scare-Off?," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(3), pages 493-514, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:3:y:2015:i:03:p:493-514_00
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2014. "Electoral Imbalances and their Consequences," MPRA Paper 68650, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 26 Nov 2015.
    2. Bennett, Daniel L. & Long, Jason T., 2019. "Is it the economic policy, stupid? Economic policy, political parties & the gubernatorial incumbent advantage," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 118-137.
    3. Dylan Brewer & Alyssa Carlson, 2024. "Addressing sample selection bias for machine learning methods," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(3), pages 383-400, April.
    4. Lippmann, Quentin, 2023. "Persistence of incumbents and female access to political positions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 327-349.
    5. Kevin Dano & Francesco Ferlenga & Vincenzo Galasso & Caroline Le Pennec & Vincent Pons, 2022. "Coordination and Incumbency Advantage in Multi-Party Systems - Evidence from French Elections," NBER Working Papers 30541, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Alexander, Dan, 2021. "Uncontested incumbents and incumbent upsets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 163-185.
    7. Ben Lockwood & James Rockey, 2020. "Negative Voters? Electoral Competition with Loss-Aversion," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(632), pages 2619-2648.
    8. Carlos Seixas & Diogo Lourenço, 2024. "On the optimality of policy choices in the face of biased beliefs, retrospective voting and the down-up problem," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 63(2), pages 299-321, September.
    9. Cox, Gary W. & Fiva, Jon H. & Smith, Daniel M., 2020. "Measuring the Competitiveness of Elections," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 168-185, April.
    10. 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).
    11. Palguta, Ján & Pertold, Filip, 2021. "Political salaries, electoral selection and the incumbency advantage: Evidence from a wage reform," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 1020-1047.
    12. Fiva, Jon H. & Røhr, Helene Lie, 2018. "Climbing the ranks: incumbency effects in party-list systems," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 142-156.

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