Political Careers in Brazil: the effect of winning vs. being the runner-up

Political careers often include transitions between elected offices. Using complete electoral data for Brazil (1998-2014), we document office-to-office transitions and use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the advantage of winning office, both when re-running for the same office (incumbency advantage), and when contending for other offices as well (career advantage). We find a clear ranking. Winning a seat in the federal or state legislatures gives an incumbency advantage. Becoming a mayor gives no incumbency advantage. The career advantage is smaller across these three offices as runners-up outperform winners in other offices. For municipal councilors, results are reversed: an incumbency disadvantage, and a small but positive effect of winners outperforming runners-up in other offices. With an heterogeneity analysis, we show that sub-samples of candidates with no experience, less educated, with a lower share of the vote, and running in smaller municipalities explain the incumbency disadvantage for local councilors.