Lame Duck by Primary: Effects of Electoral Incentives on House Representatives

• In Event: Causes and Consequences of Variability in Localized Election Administration

Abstract

While electoral incentives serve as a central mechanism of a democratic system, characterizing their specific effects remains challenging due to severe selection issues; elections introduce both electoral incentives and candidate selection, muddling the identification of which factors drive specific behaviors of the representatives. In this article, I employ a regression discontinuity design to isolate the accountability effect of elections and examine how representatives’ behavior responds to electoral incentives. Specifically, I assess differences in various types of the post-primary behavior of incumbent U.S. House Representatives, including roll call voting, federal fund acquisition, and political speeches, between marginal winners and losers of primary elections over the period between 1954 and 2022. From the results, I find a significant influence of electoral incentives on legislators’ various important legislative behavior, including that losing legislators engage less in constituency service and deviate from party-line roll call voting.

Author

• Kisoo Kim, University of Chicago