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Why Do Incumbent Senators Win? Evidence from a Dynamic Selection Model

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Author Info
Gautam Gowrisankaran
Matthew F. Mitchell
Andrea Moro

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Abstract

Since 1914, incumbent U.S. senators running for reelection have won almost 80% of the time. We investigate why incumbents win so often. We allow for three potential explanations for the incumbency advantage: selection, tenure, and challenger quality, which are separately identified using histories of election outcomes following an open seat election. We specify a dynamic model of voter behavior that allows for these three effects, and structurally estimate the parameters of the model using U.S. Senate data. We find that tenure effects are negative or small. We also find that incumbents face weaker challengers than candidates running for open seats. If incumbents faced challengers as strong as candidates for open seats, the incumbency advantage would be cut in half.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 10748.

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Date of creation: Sep 2004
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10748

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
C5 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. David S. Lee, 2001. "The Electoral Advantage to Incumbency and Voters' Valuation of Politicians' Experience: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Elections to the U.S..," NBER Working Papers 8441, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Rust, John, 1987. "Optimal Replacement of GMC Bus Engines: An Empirical Model of Harold Zurcher," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(5), pages 999-1033, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Daniel Diermeier & Michael Keane & Antonio Merlo, 2002. "A Political Economy Model of Congressional Careers," PIER Working Paper Archive 04-037, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Sep 2004. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Cox, Gary W. & Katz, Jonathan N., 1995. "Why Did The Incumbency Advantage In U.S. House Elections Grow?," Working Papers 939, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. [Downloadable!]
  5. Thierry Magnac & David Thesmar, 2002. "Identifying Dynamic Discrete Decision Processes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 801-816, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Matthew F. Mitchell, 2000. "The Scope and Organization of Production: Firm Dynamics Over the Learning Curve," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(1), pages 180-205, Spring.
  7. Goffe, William L & Ferrier, Gary D & Rogers, John, 1992. "Simulated Annealing: An Initial Application in Econometrics," Computer Science in Economics & Management, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 133-46, May. [Downloadable!]
  8. Keane, Michael P & Wolpin, Kenneth I, 1997. "The Career Decisions of Young Men," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(3), pages 473-522, June.
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  1. Gautam Gowrisankaran & Matthew F. Mitchell & Andrea Moro, 2008. "Electoral Design and Voter Welfare from the U.S. Senate: Evidence from a Dynamic Selection Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(1), pages 1-17, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Hiroyuki Kasahara & Katsumi Shimotsu, 2006. "Nonparametric Identification and Estimation of Finite Mixture Models of Dynamic Discrete Choices," UWO Department of Economics Working Papers 20065, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  3. John Patty & Roberto Weber, 2007. "Letting the good times roll: A theory of voter inference and experimental evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 293-310, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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