Closest to the People? Incumbency Advantage and the Personal Vote in Non-Partisan Elections.

ABSTRACT: Do incumbents dominate non-partisan elections because of an especially large personal vote? This question has important implications for understanding the causes of incumbent success and the benefits or drawbacks of non-partisan elections. This paper uses a natural experiment, combined with three original datasets, to estimate the size, persistence, and consequences of the personal vote in a large non-partisan city election. We first use individual-level survey data to show that individuals assigned quasi-randomly to a new incumbent are substantially less likely to support the incumbent. We use a second survey, one year later, to demonstrate the persistence of this effect. Finally, we use historical election results to simulate the electoral consequences of the personal vote; we find that

SUBMITTER: Lucas J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8847986 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature