The Value of Incumbency

Derek Willis highlights a paper being published this month in The Journal of Politics which attempts to put a dollar value on the advantage that incumbents have over challengers.

“Using elections for the House of Representatives from 1980 to 2006 and for state legislatures from 1990 to 2010, the authors focused on races where either a Republican or a Democrat very narrowly won election. They then looked at the winner’s fund-raising in the next election. On average, a candidate for national office would get a boost of $500,000 in contributions in the next election.”