Off-Cycle and Out of Office: Election Timing and the Incumbency Advantage

@article{deBenedictisKessner2018OffCycleAO,
  title={Off-Cycle and Out of Office: Election Timing and the Incumbency Advantage},
  author={Justin de Benedictis-Kessner},
  journal={The Journal of Politics},
  year={2018},
  volume={80},
  pages={119 - 132}
}
Democratic accountability relies on the ability of citizens to reward and punish politicians in elections. Electoral institutions, such as the timing of elections, may play a powerful role in this process. In this article, I assess how on-cycle (concurrent) and off-cycle elections affect one facet of accountability—the incumbency advantage—using data on nearly 10,000 mayoral elections in cities over the past 60 years. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that incumbency carries a… 
View on U Chicago Press
14 Citations
Background Citations
4

14 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Off-Cycle and Out of Sync: How Election Timing Influences Political Representation
TLDR
Examining the relationship between election timing and mass–elite congruence across local school district governments finds that board members are more likely to hold political preferences that are aligned with their constituents when boards are elected in on- versus off-cycle races.
Coattails and spillover-effects: Quasi-experimental evidence from concurrent executive and legislative elections
Off-Cycle and Off Center: Election Timing and Representation in Municipal Government
Who governs America’s cities: organized interests or mass publics? Though recent scholarship finds that local governments enact policies that align with citizens’ preferences, others argue that it is…
Are You Picking Up What I Am Laying Down? Ideology in Low-Information Elections
In November 2017, New Orleans elected the first woman, and first Black woman, mayor in the city’s history. Voters were unable to rely on gender, race, or partisanship to differentiate between the…
Incumbency and Competitiveness in City Council Elections: How Accurate Are Voter Perceptions?
Abstract Incumbent city councillors have an almost insurmountable advantage in Canadian municipal elections. This article aims to improve our understanding of the municipal incumbency advantage by…
Men and women candidates are similarly persistent after losing elections
TLDR
This manuscript examines women’s reactions to electoral losses to show that women candidates are no more dissuaded from seeking office again after losing than men are, and interprets these findings to mean that women's decision-making differs from men's at the point of entry into politics—not at thepoint of reentry.
Do “Non-Partisan” Municipal Politicians Match the Partisanship of Their Constituents?
Recent research in the United States has found that municipal governments are responsive to the ideological complexion of their cities even in the absence of partisan elections. In this paper, I test…
Lending Cycles and Real Outcomes: Costs of Political Misalignment
We document a strong political cycle in bank credit and industry outcomes in Turkey. In line with theories of tactical redistribution, state-owned banks systematically adjust their lending around…
The Partisan Logic of City Mobilization: Evidence from State Lobbying Disclosures
  • Julia Payson
  • Economics, Political Science
    American Political Science Review
  • 2020
Why do local governments sometimes hire lobbyists to represent them in other levels of government? I argue that such mobilization efforts depend in part on the policy congruence between localities…
Political party tenure and MNE location choices
We develop a theoretical framework to explain how political party tenure affects MNE entries into an economy. We leverage insights from the upper echelon and public administration literatures to…
...
1
2
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 108 REFERENCES
Election Timing and the Electoral Influence of Interest Groups
It is an established fact that off-cycle elections attract lower voter turnout than on-cycle elections. I argue that the decrease in turnout that accompanies off-cycle election timing creates a…
The Election Timing Effect: Evidence from a Policy Intervention in Texas
Many governments in the United States hold elections on days other than national Election Day. Recent studies have argued that the low voter turnout that accompanies such off-cycle elections could…
Candidate Quality, the Personal Vote, and the Incumbency Advantage in Congress
Most political observers agree that incumbent legislators have a considerable advantage over nonincumbents in modern congressional elections. Yet there is still disagreement over the exact source of…
Timing and Turnout: How Off-Cycle Elections Favor Organized Groups
Public policy in the United States is the product of decisions made by more than 500,000 elected officials, the vast majority of them elected on days other than Election Day. And because far fewer…
Incumbency Effects in a Comparative Perspective: Evidence from Brazilian Mayoral Elections
High rerunning rates among incumbents and among the two major parties, allow studies of US incumbency advantage to bypass the selection problem of who chooses to rerun. In countries where rerunning…
Disentangling the Personal and Partisan Incumbency Advantages: Evidence from Close Elections and Term Limits ∗
Although the scholarly literature on incumbency advantages focuses on personal advantages, the partisan incumbency advantage - the electoral benefit accruing to non-incumbent candidates by virtue of…
Partisan Power Play: The Origins of Local Election Timing as an American Political Institution
Eighty percent of American cities today hold their general elections on different days than state and national elections. It is an established fact that voter turnout in these off-cycle local…
Election Timing and Public Policy
There are nearly half a million elected officials in American local governments, and the timing of local elections varies enormously even within the same state. Some local elections are held…
How Much of the Incumbency Advantage is Due to Scare-Off?
This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the degree to which incumbents scare off challengers with previous officeholder experience. The estimates indicate a surprisingly small…
Incumbency Disadvantage under Electoral Rules with Intraparty Competition: Evidence from Japan
Many studies have shown that incumbent candidates have an electoral advantage over nonincumbents under single-member-district systems, but less is known about whether incumbents enjoy the same…
...
1
2
3
4
5
...