Estimating the Incumbency Advantage in U.S. House Elections in the Presence of Strategic Retirement

Abstract

Failure to take into account “strategic retirement” - incumbents choosing to retire rather than face difficult reelection fights - leads to inflated estimates of the incumbency advantage. The one attempt to address this issue in the context of U.S. House elections implies that much of the supposed incumbency advantage and most of its presumed increase over time are illusory (Cox and Katz 2002). However, there are probably unaccounted for biases in Cox and Katz (2002) that leave open the question of the relationship between strategic retirement and the incumbency advantage in House elections. This paper develops a new approach based on simulating the counterfactual condition of incumbents standing for reelection rather than retiring. The results show that when the bias induced by strategic retirement is removed, much of the apparent incumbency advantage and its increase over time remain evident.