Incumbency advantage in U.S. presidential elections: The historical record

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 123, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 201-228

  Mayhew, David R ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 47349088867     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2008.tb00622.x     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. See the argument in David R. Mayhew, Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), chap. 4.
2. Daniel J. Gans, "Persistence of Party Success in American Presidential Elections," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16 (Winter 1986): 228-230.
3. James L. Huston, The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), chap. 6. In particular, a Republican surge in the coal and iron areas of Pennsylvania, then the second largest state, following the Panic of 1857 helped loft the party to long-term control of the U.S. House. It goes without saying that slavery was a major nationwide concern in 1858 also.
4. The stickiness of party success in the House popular vote is convincingly demonstrated in Helmut Norpoth and Jerrold G. Rusk, "Electoral Myth and Reality: Realignments in American Politics," Electoral Studies 26 (June 2007): 392-403. This study, which was conducted without statistically privileging any canonical ideas about the existence of critical elections or realignment eras, points to the House elections of 1834, 1860, 1874, 1994, 1932, and 1994 as hinge points. Otherwise, closest to the authors' cut-point and carrying a p value of roughly 0.07 is the midterm election of 1938, which, to the detriment of the ruling Democrats, followed the sharp economic downturn of 1937-38.
5. See, for example, Jamie L. Carson and Jason M. Roberts, "Candidate Quality, the Personal Vote, and the Incumbency Advantage in Congress," American Political Science Review 101 (May 2007): 289-301.
6. See Gary C. Jacobson, The Politics of Congressional Elections (New York: Longman, 2001), 107-110. The period covered in the analysis is 1956-1998. Data source: American National Election Studies.
7. For a recent treatment, see Donald P. Green, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler, Partisan Hearts and Minds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002).
8. As in, for example, Philip E. Converse, Angus Campbell, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, "Stability and Change in 1960: A Reinstating Election," American Political Science Review 55 (June 1961): 269-280.
9. Estimates for 1920 through 1948, based on recall data from national surveys conducted after 1950, are from Kristi Andersen, "Generation, Partisan Shift, and Realignment: A Glance Back to the New Deal" in Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba, and John R. Petrocik, The Changing American Voter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 93. The accuracy of such recall-based estimates has been brought into doubt.
10. See, for example, Richard G. Niemi, Richard S. Katz, and David Newman, "Reconstructing Past Partisanship: The Failure of the Party Identification Recall Questions," American Journal of Political Science 24 (November 1980): 633-651.
11. Yet the idea of a major change in the balance of party identification during Franklin Roosevelt's first term is generally consistent with evidence on changes in voter registration by party supplied in James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System (Washington DC: Brookings, 1983), 220-224.
12. See Neal R. Peirce, The People's President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), 102-107;
13. Brian J. Gaines, "Popular Myths about Popular Vote-Electoral College Splits," PS: Political Science and Politics 34 (March 2001): 71-75;
14. George C. Edwards III, Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 48-51. To award the national vote edge to Kennedy "involves a moderate amount of license," V.O. Key, Jr. wrote just after that election in 1961.
15. See V.O. Key, "Interpreting the Election Returns" in Paul T. David, ed., The Presidential Election and Transition 1960-61 (Washington DC: Brookings, 1961), 150-175 at 150.
16. Recent examples in the genre include Larry M. Bartels and John Zaller, "Presidential Vote Models: A Recount," PS: Political Science and Politics 34 (March 2001): 9-20;
17. Robert S. Erikson, Joseph Bafumi, and Bret Wilson, "Was the 2000 Election Predictable? PS: Political Science and Politics 34 (December 2001): 815-819.
18. This generalization holds for a variety of American public offices. See Stephen Ansolabehere and James M. Snyder, Jr., "The Incumbency Advantage in U.S. Elections: An Analysis of State and Federal Offices, 1942-2000," Election Law Journal 1 (September 2002): 315-338.
19. Herbert F. Weisberg, "Partisanship and Incumbency in Presidential Elections," Political Behavior 24 (December 2002): 339-360.
20. Ray C. Fair, Predicting Presidential Elections and Other Things (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 46-51.
21. David Samuels, "Presidentialism and Accountability for the Economy in Comparative Perspective," American Political Science Review 98 (August 2004): 425-436, at 428-429. This analysis is confined to instances in which presidential and legislative elections occurred concurrently.
22. Helmut Norpoth, "Bush v. Gore: The Recount of Economic Voting" in Herbert F. Weisberg and Clyde Wilcox, eds., Models of Voting in Presidential Elections (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 60-63.
23. This point may become plainer as Phil Lampi makes available his new dataset "A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787-1825." Gathered over a period of several decades through an examination of early American newspapers, this dataset supplies returns for elections to some 60,000 offices. See the discussion in Jill Lepore, "Party Time: Smear Tactics, Skullduggery, and the Debut of American Democracy," The New Yorker, 17 September 2007, 94-98, at 97. For access to the Lampi dataset, see the website of the Antiquarian Society, http://dca.tufts.edu/features/aas/, accessed 14 March 2008.
24. See Norman K. Risjord, "Election of 1812" in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-1968, vol. I (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), 249-272.
25. Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 608. On the contest in New York City in 1800,
26. see also Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign (New York: Free Press, 2007), chap. 4.
27. See Lepore, "Party Time," for the Lambi estimates.
28. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 129, 133.
29. More specifically, for each election, this is the difference between the winner's and the runner-up's percentage of the total electoral vote.
30. This is a statistical relation, although obviously not a causal one. In the cases of elections in which popular and electoral vote edges went in different directions, the values for the popular vote edges in these calculations are slightly negative.
31. This is marshy territory. Not only is the election of 1960 a puzzle, there is also a certain artifactuality to the results of the very close elections of 1884 and 1888. Only a slight relaxing of the intimidation of African American voters in the South-nothing on the order of overturning the Democratic regimes of the decisively black-majority states of Mississippi and South Carolina-would probably have yielded a national popular edge for the Republican, James Blaine, juxtaposed with an electoral edge for the Democrat, Grover Cleveland, in 1884, or a joint popular and electoral vote edge for the Republican, Benjamin Harrison, in 1888. There is also 1880. A rainstorm in the wrong place that year might have washed away Republican James Garfield's national popular vote edge of fewer than 10,000 votes, although perhaps not his electoral vote edge, thus yielding another split result. At a level more basic than a rainstorm, a small Democratic edge in the 1880 popular vote during this era of dubious counts could also have been plausibly credited to the intimidation of African Americans in the South. Various conflicting reports place the national Garfield margin at 1,898,7, 368, or 9,457 votes. See Kenneth D. Ackerman, Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003), 13.
32. See Risjord, "Election of 1812"; Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic, 1801-1815 (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 245-248.
33. On the case of 1920, see David R. Mayhew, "Wars and American Politics," Perspectives on Politics 3 (September 2005): 473-493, at 484.
34. Christopher Achen, "A Baseline for Incumbency Effects" (manuscript, Princeton University, 2007).
35. These and the following results issue from a single-tailed brute-force test suitable for small samples. I owe the calculations to Joel Middleton and Joseph Sempolinski.
36. See Gans, "Persistence of Party Success," 232.
37. For a helpful discussion of the range of possibilities, see James E. Campbell, The American Campaign (College Station: Texas A & M Press, 2000), 40-42, 110-123.
38. See John R. Hibbing, Congressional Careers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 32-35.
39. See Tim Groseclose, "A Model of Candidate Location When One Candidate Has a Valence Advantage," American Journal of Political Science 45 (October 2001): 862-886. This model does not address candidates for specifically the presidency.
40. See, for example, M. Daniel Bernhardt and Daniel E. Ingberman, "Candidate Reputations and the 'Incumbency Effect,'" Journal of Public Economics 27 (June 1985): 47-67.
41. On Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the Bay of Pigs, see Philip B.K. Potter, "Does Experience Matter? American Presidential Experience, Age, and International Conflict," Journal of Conflict Resolution 51 (June 2007): 351-378, at 355-358.
42. I owe this idea to Alan Gerber.
43. See Sendhil Mullainathan and Ebonya Washington, "Sticking with Your Vote: Cognitive Dissonance and Voting" (paper presented at the American Politics Seminar, Yale University, 5 September 2007).
44. John Zaller, "Politicians as Prize Fighters: Electoral Selection and Incumbency Advantage" in John G. Geer, ed., Politicians and Party Politics (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 125, 126.
45. Ibid., 172.
46. See Achen, "A Baseline for Incumbency Effects." From the paper's abstract: "Incumbents would generally be re-elected even without the advantages of office, since they are proven winners and thus likely to defeat the average challenger."
47. For an analysis of incumbent party fatigue based on the elections of 1948 through 2000, see Bartels and Zaller, "Presidential Vote Models," 17. Certain forecasting models have also pointed to in-party decay: Alan I. Abramowitz, "When Good Forecasts Go Bad: The Time-for-Change Model and the 2004 Presidential Election," PS: Political Science and Politics 37 (October 2004): 745-746;
48. Helmut Norpoth, "From Primary to General Election: A Forecast of the Presidential Vote," PS: Political Science and Politics 37 (October 2004): 737-740.
49. In general, a homeostatic tendency toward party equilibrium should be the result of in-party decay, as is suggested in Donald E. Stokes, "On the Existence of Forces Restoring Party Competition," Public Opinion Quarterly 26 (Summer 1962): 159-171.
50. Samuels, "Presidentialism and Accountability," 428-429.
51. Fair, Predicting Presidential Elections, 46-51.
52. The F value for the equation accommodating the two X variables, a test of their joint significance, is 2.61, yielding a p value of 0.0859.
53. See Gary C. Jacobson and Samuel Kernell, Strategy and Choice in Congressional Elections (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983).
54. See the argument in Weisberg, "Partisanship and Incumbency," 342.
55. The Federalists had a weak bench after 1800, but it was weak in all circumstances.
56. Truman wrote in his 1950 memo: "In my opinion eight years as President is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity. There is a lure in power. It can get into a man's blood just as gambling and lust for money have been known to do. This is a Republic... I want this country to continue as a Republic. Cincinnatus and Washington pointed the way.... When we forget the examples of such men as Washington, Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson, all of whom could have had a continuation in office, then will we start down the road to dictatorship and ruin. I know I could be elected again and continue to break the old precedent as it was broken by F.D.R. It should not be done." Truman's staff quickly talked him out of his flirtation in 1952. See Harold F. Gosnell, Truman's Crises (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980), 507-510, quotation at p. 507;
57. Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman: A Life (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 376;
58. Cabell Phillips, The Truman Presidency (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 414-419;
59. Donald R. McCoy, The Presidency of Harry S. Truman (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984), 300-301.
60. Roy R. Nichols, Franklin Pierce (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958), 452.
61. Charles Sellers, "Election of 1844" in Schlesinger, ed., History of American Presidential Elections, vol. I, 747-861.
62. Ari Hoogenboom, Rutherford B. Hayes (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 266-267.
63. Philip S. Klein, President James Buchanan: A Biography (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 332, 340, quotation, which appeared in a letter from Buchanan to the wife of ex-President James K. Polk, at 340. On the subject of presidential service, there is a tradition of treating the immediate antebellum decades as a time apart: "This was an era of one-term Presidencies and of frequent rejection of the President as party leader. The Whig platform of 1844 advocated a one-term limit. James K. Polk announced that he would not be a candidate for a second term; Franklin Pierce tried for the nomination and failed. James Buchanan found it expedient not to make the effort. The four-year limitation was accepted in principle to the point where Horace Greeley could use it electorally as a substantial argument against the re-nomination of Abraham Lincoln in 1864. With Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, however, the two-term tradition was restored." Paul T. David, Ralph M. Goldman, and Richard C. Bain, The Politics of National Party Conventions (Washington DC: Brookings, 1960), 13-14. Perhaps a one-term norm did obtain for a while. On the other hand, these are small numbers. We might not be entertaining any such case if just one domineering politician on the order of Andrew Jackson had come along around 1850.
64. Donald R. McCoy, Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 389-390, 412;
65. Claude M. Fuess, Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont (Boston: Little, Brown, 1940), 392-401, 458-464.
66. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 519-530 on Johnson's decision whether to run again, 522-523, 526-529 specifically on the health considerations.
67. See also Irwin Unger and Debi Unger, LBJ: A Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1999), 439-441, 458-459;
68. Randall B. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (New York: Free Press, 2006), 767-768, 817. The actuarial study predicted death at age 64. In fact, Johnson died at age 64 and a half.
69. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 602, 605, 619-622.
70. See also Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, 882-884.
71. On FDR's decision, see Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: Into the Storm, 1937-1940 (New York: Random House, 1993), 532-535, 584-586;
72. Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Rendezvous with Destiny (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1990), 327-328, 341, 346.
73. See also Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), 169-173, quotation at 169: "It is safe to say that, if there had been no international crisis, he would not have run...."
74. Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice, 3rd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 71.
75. Gallup Poll data available at the Roper Center's iPOLL Databank. FDR's readings during this time span were generally in that range if the denominators are allowed to include "no opinion" responses. For an analysis covering the era, see Matthew A. Baum and Samuel Kernell, "Economic Class and Popular Support for Franklin Roosevelt in War and Peace," Public Opinion Quarterly 65 (Summer 2001): 198-229.
76. The third-term time series, which includes chiefly Gallup polls, is available at the Roper Center's iPOLL Databank. Roosevelt's biographer, James MacGregor Burns, has written: "As the crisis deepened, Roosevelt's popular backing mounted strongly. Millions of Americans forgot their concern for the third-term tradition as they instinctively rallied behind their leader against the trouble outside." See James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1956), 422. In Roper surveys in August and September of 1940, 47 percent and 50 percent, respectively, of respondents chose the option "While it may not generally be a good idea for a president to serve three terms, there should be no rule preventing him at a time of national crisis," against the options of, essentially, a third term bar is a silly idea (15 percent and 16 percent) or third terms should never be allowed (34 percent and 30 percent). Data available at the Roper Center's iPOLL Databank.
77. The Roosevelt versus Dewey time series is from Hadley Cantril, Public Opinion, 1935-1946 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), 650.
78. Ibid., item 62 (Office of Public Opinion Research Survey), 617.
79. Ibid., item 76 (American Institute of Public Opinion Survey), 618.
80. See the discussions in Robert A. Divine, Foreign Policy and U.S. Presidential Elections: 1940, 1948 (New York: New Viewpoints, 1974), chaps. 1, 2;
81. Michael Barone, Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: Free Press, 1990), 133-134, 145, 156, 181.
82. Cantril, Public Opinion, item 59 (Fortune Survey), 617. An announced caveat: "Southern Negroes were omitted in this tabulation because their franchise is largely ineffective."
83. Ibid., items 15 (AIPO), 607; 18 (AIPO), 609; 21 (AIPO), 609, 31 (AIPO), 613; 16 (AIPO), 608; 17 (AIPO), 608.
84. See Divine, Foreign Policy, chaps. 5-7.