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A General Path of Incumbencies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2025
Abstract
With a larger and more diverse set of countries than Cuzán and Heggen (2023a) studied, this article completes a general path of incumbencies that was partially traced by their “cruise and crash” model of the cost of ruling. The missing piece is a bump in the share of the vote in the party’s first reelection. The electoral “bonus” holds more or less steadily until the crash, at which point the vote plunges about 20% below the original win. The analysis suggests that the path of the vote in long-term incumbencies follows a general pattern that is shaped like an inverted asymmetrical letter U or W.
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- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association
References
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Cuzán supplementary material
Cuzán supplementary material
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