Running in Someone Else’s Shoes: The Electoral Consequences of Running as an Appointed Senator

Carrie Eaves
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Carrie Eaves: Department of Political Science and Policy Studies, Elon University, Elon, NC 27244, USA

Social Sciences, 2018, vol. 7, issue 5, 1-12

Abstract: Over the past century, nearly two hundred times a governor has appointed an individual to fill a vacant Senate seat. This research seeks to understand the electoral fates of these appointed senators. First, I address the question of when and under what conditions an appointed senator will choose to run for reelection to the seat. Then, should they choose to run for that office in the next election, they are in the rare position of being an incumbent who has not previously won an election to that particular office. Although these appointed senators are not on equal footing as other first-term senators, they still provide a unique circumstance worthy of further examination. I find that those appointed senators who had previously held an elected office were more likely to run to maintain the Senate seat. I also find that appointed senators fare slightly worse than other first-term senators did when campaigning for reelection.

Keywords: senate elections; appointments; incumbency advantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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