The incumbency advantage, the electoral benefit from holding office, is widely estimated using regression discontinuity designs (RDDs) in close elections. Existing estimates typically pool first-term and multiple-term incumbents.
- Speaker
- Date
- Tuesday 7 Apr 2026, 13:00 - 14:15
- Type
- Seminar
- Room
- 1.02
- Building
- Langeveld Building
We show that this pooling attenuates RDD estimates when candidate characteristics contain persistent shocks, such as quality: a multiple-term incumbent who barely wins has already revealed low quality, fully absorbing the incumbency premium.
Using U.S. House (1942-2008) and Portuguese municipal elections (1976-2025), estimates for one-term incumbents are 13.5 and 13.8 percentage points versus 7.8 and 2.8 pp for multiple-term incumbents.
Standard pooled RDD estimates understate the causal incumbency advantage from first-time officeholding by 20-30 percent.
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