The Marginals Never Vanished: Incumbency and Competition in Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives, 1952-82

The disadvantaged incumbents: estimating incumbency effects in Indian state legislatures

“…Among various factors given for increased incumbent security are incumbents' control over redistricting plans (Tufte 1973), increased franking privileges (Mayhew 1974), increased identification with the candidate rather than the party (Erikson 1971(Erikson , 1972Cover 1977;Ferejohn 1977) and increased bureaucratic resources available to incumbents (Fiorina 1977). Jacobson (1985Jacobson ( , 1987, however, argued that the incumbency advantage did not increase after the mid-1960s as the reelection chances of incumbents had not increased.…”

The Reapportionment Revolution and Bias in U. S. Congressional Elections

“…If incumbency confers more votes on average but does not increase the probability of victory (as in Jacobson 1987), then the efficiency with which Democratic votes were translated into Democratic seats would not be improved; it would be worsened. The Erikson, King and Gelman story line requires that the seat-denominated incumbency advantage increased but there is no evidence that this happened over the relevant time period (Jacobson 1987). Thus, the disappearance of pro-Republican bias outside the south remains a puzzle.…”

Estimating Incumbency Advantage without Bias

“…For example, Cover and Mayhew (1977) calculate, among other things, the percentage of incumbents winning with at least 60% of the vote. Jacobson (1987), Ansolabehere,Brady,and Fiorina (I988), and others have also calculated a variety of statistics measuring individual incumbents' vulnerability. We could add a control variable I, to this equation for incumbency status at time 1, but we find in practice that this has no appreciable effect on our estimate of I ) and therefore omit it.…”