Context and Strategy in Presidential Campaigns: Incumbency and the Political Climate

Abstract

We propose and examine a theory of how the context of the political climate and incumbency interact to affect candidate strategies and their impact on candidate evaluations and the vote in presidential elections. From this theory, we generate four hypotheses. Two concern the difference between elections in which the incumbent runs as opposed to open seat races with a successor in-party candidate. The other two hypotheses concern the difference in evaluations of incumbents and successor candidates in open seat elections. The results indicate that open seat elections are less reflective of the political climate than incumbent elections, that incumbents experience higher highs and lower lows than successor candidates, that evaluations of successor candidates tend to be more muted representations of evaluations of incumbents, and that the vote in open seat races depends more heavily on how voters judge the successor candidate rather than the incumbent leaving office. The contextual campaign made a substantial difference in 2008, allowing John McCain to distance himself from the unpopular President Bush and to do significantly better in evaluations and at the polls than the incumbent would have.