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Abstract

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 paper, 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 substantial advantage for individual candidates. Moreover, I find that on-cycle elections provide incumbents with a far larger advantage than off-cycle elections do. These results show that election timing has important implications for electoral politics, and demonstrate one possible mechanism for the prevalence of the incumbency advantage.

Citation

de Benedictis-Kessner, Justin. "Off-Cycle and Out of Office: Election Timing and the Incumbency Advantage." The Journal of Politics 80.1 (January 2018): 119-132.