Campaign Rhetoric and the Incumbency Advantage
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6180362 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James N Druckman (0000-0002-1249-6790, Northwestern University), Martin Kifer (0000-0002-3393-9079, High Point University, corresponding author), Michael Parkin (0000-0002-8505-765X, Oberlin College) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 22-43 |
| Publication date | 2020-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Politics Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1532-673X • E-ISSN: 1552-3373 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1532673x18822314 |
| OpenAlex | W2914575946 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
| References cited | 45 |
The congressional incumbency advantage reflects an inequity in competition—candidates receive an electoral edge simply because they hold office. Scholars have identified an array of factors that contribute to the incumbency advantage; however, the role of electoral campaigns has been largely ignored. We argue that campaigns are a mechanism through which the incumbency advantage works. All else constant, incumbents focus their campaigns on factors that reflect their standing position, such as their familiarity to voters and actions taken for their district/state. Voters consequently rely on such incumbency factors when making their decisions. The outcome is challengers are at an extreme disadvantage, and campaigns offer scant substantive engagement. We offer evidence for these dynamics with a large-scale content analysis of campaign websites and an experiment. In so doing, we highlight a challenge to theories of democratic representation that focus on equal competition and/or substantive campaign engagement
Democracy · Disadvantage · Economics · Microeconomics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Gender Politics and Representation · Law · Social Media and Politics
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Mobile Broadband and the Decline of Incumbency Advantage
Preventing leaders' autocratic entrenchment by exponential super-majority threshold escalators
Status Threat, Campaign Rhetoric, and US Foreign Policy
Local Representation and Voter Mobilization in Closed-list Proportional Representation Systems
Building the Party on the Ground
Strategic Campaign Communication
Fine-tuned large language models can replicate expert coding better than trained coders
Campaigning on the Ability to Govern
Individual drivers of toxicity in radical right-wing populist legislative campaigns
Interest Group Influence on Preferences for New Voting Rights Legislation in a Polarized Environment
Two terms of endearment? Incumbent-party performance in US presidential elections
Redefining “expansion” in congressional communication
Crisis, Rhetoric and Right-Wing Populist Incumbency
Running uphill
Heuristic Projection
Gone, but not forgotten? The German federal election 2021 and the effect of an incumbent who did not run
Liberal and anti-establishment
The strategy of rhetoric
Congress, keystone of the Washington establishment
Elbridge Gerry's Salamander
He Runs, She Runs
Representational Style in Congress
Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections
Political Representation
Incumbency, Redistricting, and the Decline of Competition in U.S. House Elections
What Explains Incumbent Success? Disentangling Selection on Party, Selection on Candidate Characteristics, and Office-Holding Benefits
Disentangling the Personal and Partisan Incumbency Advantages
Resisting the Opportunity for Change
Issue Engagement on Congressional Candidate Web Sites, 2002—2006
Congress, The Electoral Connection
The Incumbent in the Living Room
Incumbency Reconsidered
Decomposing the Sources of Incumbency Advantage in the U. S. House
Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections
Electoral Selection, Strategic Challenger Entry, and the Incumbency Advantage
Priming under Fire
It’s Nothing Personal
Perceptions vs. Actual Exposure to Electoral Competition and Effects on Political Participation
Electoral Competition and the Voter
How Much of the Incumbency Advantage is Due to Scare-Off
Timeless Strategy Meets New Medium
Pathologies of Studying Public Opinion, Political Communication, and Democratic Responsiveness
The Impact of Gender Stereotyped Evaluations on Support for Women Candidates
Emotion and the Framing of Risky Choice
Risk Attitudes and the Incumbency Advantage
Partisan Effects of Legislative Term Limits
Learning More from Political Communication Experiments
Gender Stereotypes and the Perception of Male and Female Candidates
Learning about Voter Rationality
Valence and Campaigns
Making the Most of Statistical Analyses
Estimating Incumbency Advantage without Bias
Candidate Qualities through a Partisan Lens
Old Voters, New Voters, and the Personal Vote
Campaign Perceptions of Electoral Closeness
A Bayesian explanation for the effect of incumbency
Framing Public Opinion in Competitive Democracies
Candidates and Parties in Congressional Elections
Candidate Quality, the Personal Vote, and the Incumbency Advantage in Congress
Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias
Toward a Mobilization Conception of Democratic Representation
| Unique citing works | 19 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,8 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 18 |