Old Voters, New Voters, and the Personal Vote: Using Redistricting to Measure the Incumbency Advantage

Snyder, James M.; Ansolabehere, Stephen; Stewart, Charles

doi:10.2307/2669290

Cited by 259 publications

(237 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Therefore, incumbents will have to compromise on some dimension if they want to be reelected Two mechanisms that can generate this trade-o¤ between policies and reelection chances are referenda and participatory democracy. The characteristics that both have in common are: (1) there is an issue that a signi…cant part of the population considers to be very important; (2) the incumbent receives from citizens a policy proposal on this issue; (3) the incumbent must make a decision regarding that issue; (4) there is a signi…cant proportion of voters that may base their voting decision on that issue. Next, we elaborate on how these two mechanisms …t in our main argument.…”

Section: Two Sources Of Incumbency (Dis)advantagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 Still, a referendum initiated by the incumbent might have a weaker effect on voters' reaction than a referendum that originates with a popular initiative. 4 Popular initiatives sometimes take the form of legislative proposals that citizens can place in the ballot. This is the case in 24 US states, where petitions by citizens are voted after obtaining a number of signatures (between 2% and 15% of the voting population).…”

Section: Referenda and Popular Initiativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can create a disadvantage compared to the case of an incumbent who does not face such proposals. But also compared to the challenger, whose position does not require him to make any pre-election choice and who, as a result, may have 1 Other studies assume that incumbents have better ways to in ‡uence voters'decisions than challengers through di¤erent mechanisms such as redistricting (Levitt andWolfram 1997, Cox andKatz 2002), seniority (McKelvey and Reizman 1992), informational advantages (Krehbiel and Wright 1983), better access to campaign resources (Goodli¤e 2001, Jacobson 2001), legislative irresponsibility (Fiorina 1989) or pork barrel politics (Cain, Ferejohn, andFiorina 1987, Ansolabehere, Snyder, andStewart 2000). 2 In this line, Bevia and Llavador (2009) show that only good quality incumbents may enjoy an advantage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Incumbency (Dis)Advantage When Citizens Can Propose

Sánchez‐Pagés¹,

d'Economia

2014

SSRN Journal

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This paper analyses the problem that an incumbent faces during the legislature when deciding how to react to citizen proposals such as the outcome of referenda or popular initiatives. We argue that these proposals constitute a potential source of electoral disadvantage when citizens factor in their evaluation of the incumbent his reaction to these proposals. This is because an incumbent politician may jeopardize his re-election by implementing policies close to his preferred ones but unpopular among the electorate. We characterize conditions under which this potential disadvantage becomes in fact an electoral advantage for the incumbent. We fi nd that the choices of the incumbent during the legislature will be closest to citizens policy proposals when the intensity of electoral competition is neither too soft nor too tough. Finally, we use our results to discuss some implications of the use of mechanisms such as referenda and popular assemblies on electoral competition and on the incumbency advantage phenomenon. Acknowledgements: 1A previous version of this paper circulated under the title "The disadvantage of winning an election". The present version supersedes that one. Aragonès acknowledges nancial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, grant number ECO2009-08820, the Catalan Government, grant number 2009 SGR 1126, and the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. We would like to thank Miguel Angel Ballester, Micael Castanheira, Luca Merlino, Maggie Penn, Clara Ponsatí, Norman Scho eld, Jim Snyder, Joel Sobel, participants at the rst APE-X meeting in Brussels, the MOVE conference in Barcelona and the IAE s informal seminar for their useful comments.

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Section: Two Sources Of Incumbency (Dis)advantagementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Referenda and Popular Initiativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Incumbency (Dis)Advantage When Citizens Can Propose

Sánchez‐Pagés¹,

d'Economia

2014

SSRN Journal

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“…In particular, De Paola et al (2010), using the same data we consider in this paper, 4 show that the percentage of votes obtained by each candidate and the probability of being elected as a mayor at Italian municipal elections is positively affected by incumbency. An incumbency advantage emerges also for US (Butler, 2009;Ansolabehere et al 2000), and German federal elections (Hainmueller and Kern, 2008). Conversely, Titiunik (2009), analyzing the incumbency effect for Brazilian municipal elections, finds a negative impact.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of incumbency on turnout. Evidence from Italian municipalities

Benedetto

Paola

2016

Electoral Studies

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We analyze how having an incumbent among candidates affects electoral turnout. We use a rich data set providing information on the electoral results of Italian municipal elections over the period 1993-2011. Endogeneity issues are handled through an instrumental variable approach using the mayor term-limit as an instrument for the presence of the incumbent mayor among candidates. Controlling for electoral competition, we find that the impact of incumbency is heterogeneous across geographical areas: incumbency increases turnout in the South of Italy, whereas we do not find any statistically significant effect in the North. As the positive effect holds true only for southern municipalities endowed with low levels of social capital we speculate that this is the result of incumbent politicians using their resources to establish clienteles.JEL Classification: D72, D78, J71, J16

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“…What we do not know is whether incumbents have played an active role in inducing these changes." This question has since been addressed by many (Ferejohn 1977;Fiorina 1977a;Fiorina 1977b;Born 1979;Parker 1980;Krehbiel and Wright 1983;Garand and Gross 1984;Ansolabehere et al 2000), but the answer is "still disputed" (Jacobson 1987a, 134). Did members of Congress "accept willy-nilly, a kind of Faustian bargain: greater power over their own electoral fortunes, but at the price of being condemned to unrelenting entrepreneurial effort" (Jacobson 1987b, 40)?…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Causes and Consequences of “Running Scared”

Herrerra¹,

Yawn²

2007

ARP

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Despite attention given to the advantage of incumbency and the tireless pursuit of a personal vote by members of Congress, little attention has been directed at the consequences of the ‘running scared’ phenomenon. Specifically, the relationship between congressional behavior and changes in the electorate is as yet unspecified. Did the erosion of partisanship in the electorate facilitate the emergence of a new style of representative? Or did the activities of members of Congress beginning in the years immediately following World War II contribute to a partisan dealignment? Drawing on the work of Fiorina and using some available but heretofore neglected data, we demonstrate that changes in congressional behavior were spurred by an increased sensitivity to electoral fortunes and began prior to the electoral dealignment of the 1960s. Further, we show that the changing behavior of House members was working to weaken partisan ties among the electorate.

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Old Voters, New Voters, and the Personal Vote: Using Redistricting to Measure the Incumbency Advantage

Cited by 259 publications

References 27 publications

Incumbency (Dis)Advantage When Citizens Can Propose

Incumbency (Dis)Advantage When Citizens Can Propose

The impact of incumbency on turnout. Evidence from Italian municipalities

The Causes and Consequences of “Running Scared”

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