Is Incumbency Advantage Gendered?

Abstract

Do incumbents have an electoral advantage and if so, do these advantages differ across gender? In this study, I estimate the electoral advantages enjoyed by incumbents in 10 Canadian federal elections, across 3059 ridings, from 1990 to 2021. Using a regression discontinuity design, I compare men and women who have very narrowly won or lost elections on three different indicators: propensity to run again, probability of winning the next election, and vote share. I find that women incumbents are just as likely to run again in subsequent elections as men incumbents. However, women who lose an election appear to be more likely to quit politics compared to men who lose an election. I do not find clear incumbency effects for probability of winning at the next election and vote share.

Unequal Resources, Unequal Careers: The Role of Campaign Financing in the Gender Gap in Candidates’ Persistence in Brazil

“…The findings of this research have multiple implications. First, in line with the results found by Sevi (2022) and Wasserman (2018), I show that female candidates are more likely to drop out of politics more quickly than their male counterparts; however, this work is the first to document the gap in rerunning under an electoral system with gender quotas. When gender quotas are not accompanied by policies to empower women within the political arena, such as campaign finance regulations, the gender gaps tend to persist.…”

“…Similarly, Bernhard and de Benedictis-Kessner (2021), who investigate state elections and local elections in California and Wasserman (2021), who analyzes US state legislative elections, both conclude that there are no observable gender differences in the tendency to rerun. In contrast with those studies, Sevi (2022) for Canadian federal elections and Wasserman (2018) for local elections in California find that women are significantly less likely to rerun after losing an election than their male counterparts. Dolan and Shah (2020) theorize about the different mechanisms that affect women's decision to rerun after losing.…”