Southern Primary and Electoral Competition and Incumbent Success

Abstract

A survey of primary and general elections in the lower houses of 11 southern and border states (1968-1986) shows that there is a very high rate of renomination and reelection for those incumbents who run and that a substantial proportion are unopposed in the primary, the general election, or both. Those running in multimember free-for-all districts are more likely to have some opposition than those in single-member or multimember position districts. There has been an increase over the 20-year period in the proportion of incumbents who are unopposed in one or both elections. Although Republican incumbents are more likely than Democrats to have general election opposition, there has been a surprisingly large increase over time in the proportion of Republican incumbents reelected without opposition. This is a study of the success of incumbent representatives in southern and border state legislatures in winning renomination, winning reelection, and winning without opposition. It includes primaries and general elections in 11 states for which adequate primary data are available from the dataset compiled by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).