The End of the Incumbency Advantage
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In a major new paper presented at MPSA, Gary Jacobson — the leading expert on the subject — presented data showing that partisan polarization has essentially ended the incumbency advantage:
Looks like a reversion to the pre-war period of the incumbency advantage. Almost seems stunning how the incumbency advantage increased during the “Textbook Congress” era! pic.twitter.com/WBc6YuXuTx
— Carlos Algara (@algaraca) April 6, 2019
This was bad news for Senate Dems in 2018, and presents a major problem going forward. On the other hand, arguments that “Trump will probably win because incumbents generally win” aren’t very convincing. The presidential incumbency advantage has always been somewhat overstated anyway — you can get an impressive-sounding small sample number post-WWII only by ignoring Truman and LBJ bowing out before competing in elections they certainly and probably would have lost, which you really shouldn’t — but in a context with hyper-partisan voting patterns, and an incumbent whose consistent unpopularity is unprecedented, it’s a very minor advantage at best. (Particularly considering the substantial advantage Trump gained from the near-universal assumption that he had no chance of actually winning, which was critical to both the ridiculous over-coverage of Clinton pseudo-scandals and James Comey’s prejudicial interventions.) As Ygelsias has written more than once, Trump’s popular vote share in 2016 is basically is ceiling; all that’s needed to beat him is for his opposition to remain united.
On a related matter, there has been discussion in recent comment threads about whether people should vote for Bernie or Biden or whatever if they win the nomination. I guess we need Paul’s speech on the point again:
Speaking of Hillary Clinton not making lefties of various stripes quiver with that very special feeling, it’s just seems bizarre that after the last fifteen years people of even the vaguest progressive persuasion broadly defined could care about things like how a particular politician makes them “feel” about casting their vote. The coming presidential election, for those of us in this category, will consist of ordering one of three things for dinner: pizza, Indian food, or anthrax. For me Sanders is pretty good Indian food, while HRC on her worst days is Pizza Hut pizza, but the choice between Pizza Hut and anthrax is not a choice in any conceivable sense of the word, and having any sort of argument about this in 2015 as opposed to 2000 seems really ridiculous.
Tulsi is the, I dunno, White Castle of the 2020 candidates, and, yup, still much better than anthrax. Joe Biden, the TGI Friday’s, ditto. And while I have misgivings about some aspects about Benie’s vision of politics and age that are relevant when comparing him to other top candidates for the nomination he’s far over the “better than Donald Goddamned Trump” line and people on any part of the left should vote for him in every jurisdiction if he’s the nominee and don’t be ridiculous.