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How Much of the Incumbency Advantage is Due toScare-Off?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2015

Andrew B. Hall  and
James M. Snyder Jr
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Abstract

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

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Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 493 - 514
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Andrew B. Hall is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government atHarvard University, as well as an affiliate of the Institute forQuantitative Social Sciences, 1737 Cambridge St CGIS-Knafel Building,Room 453 Cambridge, MA 02138 (hall@fas.harvard.edu, http://www.andrewbenjaminhall.com). James M. Snyder, Jr. isthe Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science atHarvard University and NBER, 1737 Cambridge St CGIS-Knafel Building,Room 413, Cambridge, MA 02138 (jsnyder@gov.harvard.edu, http://scholar.harvard.edu/jsnyder/home).

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Hall and Synder Datasets

Datasets

http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/27279
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