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Posted on 01/05/2004 1:14:22 PM PST by untenured
Incumbent Advantage
American representative government suffers from the handicap of a largely uncompetitive political system. Why should we be concerned about a lack of political competition? Political scientist Ross K. Baker suggests a reason:
Incumbency has become so entrenched . . . that many voters lack any real say in who represents them. Democratic and Republican House incumbents alike share a semi-perpetual easement on their seats that more nearly resembles hereditary entitlement than the competitive politics we associate with a democracy.
Not only are the advantages of incumbency important, but their importance has risen over time, especially since the passage of the first package of comprehensive campaign finance regulations in 1974. In the first 14 House elections after World War II, one party or another gained an average of 27 seats; in the past 14 elections, the average gain was only 16 seats. Not only do incumbents win more often than they used to but they win by increasingly wide margins. In 1998 and 2000, 90 percent of successful congressional candidates secured at least 55 percent of the popular vote, constituting the least competitive elections (with one exception) since 1946. In 1998, 401 of 435 members of Congress sought reelection; only 6 were not reelected. Therefore, the reelection rate for House incumbents was more than 98 percent. The reelection rate for incumbents at the end of two terms was 100 percent. The most recent evidence is equally discomforting: the 2000 congressional election saw 392 of 399 House incumbents — 98 percent again — reelected. Over the past 50 years, the congressional reelection rate has averaged more than 90 percent and has gradually risen. On the Senate side, only three incumbents were defeated in 1998, producing a 90 percent reelection rate. In 2000, the Senate reelection rate was 80 percent.
Incumbent advantage in congressional elections is a topic of considerable scholarly interest. Economist David S. Lee’s empirical analysis found “striking evidence that incumbency has a significant causal effect of raising the probability of subsequent electoral success.” In federal politics, incumbency is worth an 11 percent increase in expected vote share to the average officeholder. The factors contributing to this Sovietstyle success rate among incumbent politicians illustrate the political advantages conferred by public subsidy.
The advantage of the average congressional incumbent entering any given election is composed of several factors. These include the congressional franking privilege that allows incumbents to flood their districts with free mail that serves to raise their political profiles; large administrative and political staffs both on Capitol Hill and in district offices; free travel; free constituent service; lawmaking power, including district- or state-specific pork-barrel spending; access to the media; free television studios; and, most recently, free Websites for communicating with the electorate.
In addition to being subsidized by taxpayers, these vote-enhancing instruments share a common origin: all were self-bestowed benefits brought into effect by incumbent politicians seeking to reinforce their political invulnerability. Critically, limits on contributions to candidates were similarly designed (and are protected) to ensure the same outcome: an uneven campaign playing field.
During the current campaign, a person may give up to $1,000 to a candidate. This is “hard money.” The candidate may use it directly for his own campaign. (“Soft money” may be used to advocate issues or for a political party—but not for the candidate directly— and soft money amounts are not restricted, at least not until November 6 of this year.) If adjusted for inflation, the $1,000 contribution limit enacted back in 1974 would be worth around $3,500 today.
Extensive political science scholarship confirms what politicians recognize at first glance — it is difficult for a challenger to oust an incumbent unless the challenger spends at least as much as and probably more than the incumbent during the campaign period. Only by spending large sums on television advertising, direct mail solicitations, and grassroots organization can a challenger develop the levels of name recognition, issue identification, and voter mobilization to catch up with the years (frequently decades) of subsidized campaigning and pork-barrel spending that characterize an incumbent’s terms in office.
Under the rhetorical guise of warding off unspecified corruption, incumbents are happy to limit themselves to $1,000 (or even $2,000, as of November 6, 2002) contributions. Certainly, they may detest the phone calls they have to make and the fundraising breakfasts, lunches, and dinners they have to attend. But at night the incumbents sleep well knowing that their challengers back home must do the same (more, if the challengers are serious about winning) without, in most cases, a comparable network of contacts, donors, and lobbyists whose long-standing collective investment in the incumbents’ careers ensures continuing financial commitment. Incumbent politicians raise, on average, more than twice the amount of campaign contributions that their challengers do. For example, political action committees contribute nearly eight times more money to incumbents than to challengers.
Three decades of empirical evidence show that contribution limits have two insidious consequences. First, they greatly reduce the likelihood that a challenger will successfully oust an incumbent, thereby reducing the level of competition necessary for a healthy political system. Second, such long odds against success provide an enormous disincentive for qualified people to put themselves forward as candidates in the first place, thereby reducing the quality of the pool of potential challengers and would-be successors should — by scandal, death, or resignation — an incumbent fail to gain or seek reelection. Hence, incumbency advantage makes candidate recruitment much harder.
Because of increasingly sophisticated gerrymandering, running for office is harder for newcomers because the redistricting process strengthens the advantages incumbents enjoy. According to the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund: “Incumbents are using high-powered computers to create lifetime sinecures for themselves. That kind of privilege and protection is certainly not what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they overthrew a monarchy to form a republic.” Consequently, neither major party is expected to win or lose the House of Represent-atives on the basis of the latest redistricting battle. Overall, the Republicans may have come out ahead by two or three seats, but no more than that, despite initial National Republican Congressional Committee forecasts that the GOP would gain 8 to 10 seats from redistricting. Although the redrawing of congressional districts following the 2000 census should not produce any major shifts in the national partisan landscape, it has made many more congressional races noncompetitive affairs. Electoral instruments, such as redistricting, that serve to protect the “Incumbent Class” ensure that one in five incumbent members of Congress will be returned to Capitol Hill following uncontested races in their districts, that is, one in which the incumbent has no major party challenger. It is estimated that more than 80 incumbents are already guaranteed a free pass back to Congress.
During the current campaign season the real electoral battleground is smaller than ever because only 30 to 45 seats are truly competitive compared with 121 seats a decade ago. Some partisan polling identified just 10 vulnerable incumbent Democrats and only 18 vulnerable incumbent Republicans. Of the few dozen competitive seats, only 11 are tossup contests that either party could just as easily win, down from 44 in 1992.
This anti-competitive trend led economist Randall Holcombe to conclude that “political markets are divided in the same way that cartels would divide markets in order to make each member a monopolist in his own territory to help enforce the cartel agreement.”
The influential congressional prognosticator Charles E. Cook Jr. notes:
Perhaps most alarming about this decline in competition is that, typically, greater competition and turnover characterize the first couple of congressional elections after redistricting. Then legislators settle into their new districts and the level of competition goes down until new maps are drawn. If the competition is this low in the first election after a redistricting, imagine what it will be like by 2008 and 2010.
Take the example of California. This state has the nation’s largest congressional delegation— 53 seats—but this year it will have only one competitive race (in the 18th District). And that contest is occurring only because of Democratic state Rep. Dennis Cardoza’s primary defeat of disgraced seven-term Rep. Gary Condit, tarred by the investigation into the disappearance and murder of Chandra Levy. Across the country, according to Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, in practice “the only way you can lose a seat that’s safe is by losing a primary.” According to Dan Johnson- Weinberger, national field director for the center: “A lot of states are drawing out competitive districts. This might make for interesting primaries . . . but it makes for coronations in the general elections.”
Incumbent advantage is a concept that is not lost on the public. A Rasmussen poll found 72 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “in American elections, members of Congress have unfair advantages over people who want to run against them.”
As Ross Baker recently observed: If you value a spirited and competitive congressional election campaign, it’s always distressing to see a large number of uncontested seats. It’s one more bit of evidence that the incumbent advantage is very difficult to overcome. It serves as a deterrent in many cases and a complete obstacle in many others. And it’s not going to change any time soon.
Politicians disconnected from electoral competition are more prone to grab freedom from the citizenry, and to otherwise be unresponsive. Along with federalism, the separation of powers and other features of our constitutional design, competitive elections are one of the bulwarks of our freedoms.
This was written before the 2002 elections, but nothing that happened there meaningfully changed the problem as far as I can see. It was also written before McCain-Feingold, which will undoubtedly make the problem worse
This is only an excerpt of a paper that touches on other topics, and I have deleted the footnotes. They are available at the source.
I would be interested to know what Freepers think about the importance of the problem and about some feasible solutions.
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And the anser is----------TERM LIMITS!!!!
TERM LIMITS fixes ALL of the problems. It should be applied to ALL levels of government and to EVERY elective or non-civil service appointive office.
I have some sympathy for term limits. However, in some sense they are just surrender, in that we concede we can't get the bums out of office through elections, so we just limit their ability to do damage. Restoring competitive elections, if possible, would IMHO be better. But it may not be possible.
Also, I wonder what people who live in states with term limits think. Are they working? Is governance better? California has gotten into a huge mess while they have a term-limited legislature, but it may not be fair to blame their problems on that.
Also, federal term limits would have to be done via constitutional amendment, which would be very difficult. At the federal level I wonder what else might work.
Under the rhetorical guise of warding off unspecified corruption, incumbents are happy to limit themselves to $1,000 (or even $2,000, as of November 6, 2002) contributions. Certainly, they may detest the phone calls they have to make and the fundraising breakfasts, lunches, and dinners they have to attend. But at night the incumbents sleep well knowing that their challengers back home must do the same (more, if the challengers are serious about winning) without, in most cases, a comparable network of contacts, donors, and lobbyists whose long-standing collective investment in the incumbents’ careers ensures continuing financial commitment. Incumbent politicians raise, on average, more than twice the amount of campaign contributions that their challengers do. For example, political action committees contribute nearly eight times more money to incumbents than to challengers.
Thus our tempest in a teapot political "debates" and phoney "controversies" over minutia or as the icon of beltway phoneyconism, George Will, puts it- "modalities" of big government.
With each new CFR bill the incumbents have further entrenched themselves and the scope of permissible "debate" over the "issues" has reached comically narrow proportions.
We are sliding into a plutocracy rather fast.
Term limits are in no way different from requiring a two-thirds majority vote for some actions, and certainly NOT any kind of "surrender". Given the advantage of incumbency (which will ALWAYS exist, simply due to name recognition if nothing else), "competitive elections" are simply not possible. If anybody believes that they are, I have a bridge across Puget Sound that is for sale.
"Also, federal term limits would have to be done via constitutional amendment, which would be very difficult. At the federal level I wonder what else might work."
Yes, it WOULD be difficult, but nothing else stands a snowball's chance in hell of working.
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