Who Runs Against the Incumbent? Candidate Entry Decisions

Luciana Moscoso Boedo

No DTE 494, Working Papers from CIDE, División de Economía

Abstract: This paper offers an explanation for the common observation that political incumbents not only frequently win reelection, but often face weak competition or no competition at all when running for reelection. I explain this outcome by modeling the entry decision of potential election candidates as a process of self-selection. Candidates choose either to enter a political race against a known-quality incumbent or to wait for an open election. The model predicts that the entry decision is non-monotonic in candidate quality: both low quality and very high quality candidates choose to enter the race. The tendency of mid-quality candidates to stay out increases the ex-ante probability that the incumbent will win, suggesting an explanation for incumbency advantage, the existence of uncontested races, and of 'sacrificial lambs'.

Keywords: Incumbent; Candidate; Entry Decisions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2010-11
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