IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucn/wpaper/201218.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Incumbent-Quality Advantage and Counterfactual Electoral Stagnation in the U.S. Senate

Author

Listed:
  • Ivan Pastine

    (University College Dublin)

  • Tuvana Pastine

    (NUI Maynooth)

  • Paul Redmond

    (NUI Maynooth)

Abstract

This paper presents a simple statistical exercise to provide a benchmark for the degree of electoral stagnation without direct officeholder benefits or challenger scare-off effects. Here electoral stagnation arises solely due to incumbent-quality advantage where the higher quality candidate wins the election. The simulation is calibrated using the observed drop-out rates in the U.S. Senate. From 1946 to 2010, the observed incumbent reelection rate is 81.7 percent; the benchmark with incumbent-quality advantage alone is able to generate a reelection rate of 78.2 percent. In the sub-sample from 1946 to 1978, the reelection rate from the simulation is almost identical to the observed. The rates diverge in the second part of the sub-sample from 1980 to 2010, possibly indicating an increase in electoral stagnation due to incumbency advantage arising for reasons other than incumbent-quality advantage.

Suggested Citation

  • Ivan Pastine & Tuvana Pastine & Paul Redmond, 2012. "Incumbent-Quality Advantage and Counterfactual Electoral Stagnation in the U.S. Senate," Working Papers 201218, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201218
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/WP12_18.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gautam Gowrisankaran & Matthew F. Mitchell & Andrea Moro, 2008. "Electoral Design and Voter Welfare from the U.S. Senate: Evidence from a Dynamic Selection Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(1), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Levitt, Steven D, 1994. "Using Repeat Challengers to Estimate the Effect of Campaign Spending on Election Outcomes in the U.S. House," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 777-798, August.
    3. Shigeo Hirano & James M. Snyder, Jr., 2009. "Using Multimember District Elections to Estimate the Sources of the Incumbency Advantage," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(2), pages 292-306, April.
    4. Walter J. Stone & L. Sandy Maisel & Cherie D. Maestas, 2004. "Quality Counts: Extending the Strategic Politician Model of Incumbent Deterrence," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(3), pages 479-495, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Redmond, Paul & Regan, John, 2015. "Incumbency advantage in a proportional electoral system: A regression discontinuity analysis of Irish elections," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 244-256.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. DeBacker, Jason, 2011. "The price of pork: The seniority trap in the U.S. House," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 63-78.
    2. Bombardini, Matilde & Trebbi, Francesco, 2011. "Votes or money? Theory and evidence from the US Congress," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 587-611, August.
    3. Enriqueta Aragonès & Santiago Sánchez-Pagés, 2014. "Incumbency (dis)advantage when citizens can propose Abstract:This paper analyses the problem that an incumbent faces during the legislature when deciding how to react to citizen proposals such as the ," UB School of Economics Working Papers 2014/314, University of Barcelona School of Economics.
    4. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2014. "Electoral Imbalances and their Consequences," MPRA Paper 68650, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 26 Nov 2015.
    5. Andrew Gelman & Guido Imbens, 2013. "Why ask Why? Forward Causal Inference and Reverse Causal Questions," NBER Working Papers 19614, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Julia Cage & Edgard Dewitte, 2021. "It Takes Money to Make MPs: Evidence from 150 Years of British Campaign Spending," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03384143, HAL.
    7. Marco Alberto De Benedetto, 2014. "Incumbency Advantage at Municipal Elections in Italy: A Quasi-Experimental Approach," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 1408, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.
    8. Jason Matthew DeBacker, 2015. "Flip‐Flopping: Ideological Adjustment Costs In The United States Senate," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 108-128, January.
    9. Julia Cage & Edgard Dewitte, 2021. "It Takes Money to Make MPs: Evidence from 150 Years of British Campaign Spending," SciencePo Working papers hal-03384143, HAL.
    10. Renato Aguilar & Claudio Parés, 2016. "Money and Votes. Incumbents in Mayoral Elections in Chile," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 1316, Department of Economics - dECON.
    11. Freille, Sebastián, 2015. "Do private campaing contributions affect electoral results? An examination of Argentine national elections," MPRA Paper 65455, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Julia Cage & Yasmine Bekkouche, 2018. "The Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014," Working Papers hal-03393149, HAL.
    13. Hung‐Hao Chang & Chad D. Meyerhoefer, 2023. "Do elections make you sick? Evidence from first‐time voters," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(5), pages 1064-1083, May.
    14. Saarimaa, Tuukka & Tukiainen, Janne, 2016. "Local representation and strategic voting: Evidence from electoral boundary reforms," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 31-45.
    15. Jeffrey Milyo, 1998. "The Electoral Effects of Campaign Spending in House Elections: A Natural Experiment Approach," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 9806, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    16. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
    17. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/1dp7827s4n8ht8fk3qhmeuvd0o is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Eric Avis & Claudio Ferraz & Frederico Finan & Carlos Varjão, "undated". "Money and Politics: The Effects of Campaign Spending Limits on Political Competition and Incumbency Advantage," Textos para discussão 656, Department of Economics PUC-Rio (Brazil).
    20. Bryan Engelhardt & Justin Svec, 2012. "Political Contributions and Insurance," Working Papers 1204, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    21. Filip Palda & Kristian Palda, 1998. "The impact of campaign expenditures on political competition in the French legislative elections of 1993," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(1), pages 157-174, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Incumbent-Quality Advantage; Counterfactual Electoral Stagnation;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201218. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nicolas Clifton (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.