Incumbent

However, they did not provide the expected changes that they had hoped to. I would argue that term limits have actually caused many negative effects; lowering the amount of competition in political races, lowering the amount of money available for parties to campaign and challenge incumbents and finally, causing challengers to wait for an easier race. While term limits have created more competition within open seat elections, it has caused challengers to wait for opportunity, which in my opinion offers the voting community less chance for change. Open seats are much easier to win for candidates versus closed seats with established incumbents. I believe that it has removed the complex nature of electoral competition. Term limits have given incumbents more power because challengers are now less likely to challenge and political parties have less funding and resources to allocate to races. Prior to term limits, challengers were faced with the option of running or giving an incumbent an even stronger chance of holding a seat hostage and it was because of this that challengers were much more likely to create a competitive campaign against incumbents for closed seats. Now, challengers have the opportunity to wait a relatively small amount of time, to avoid the great nature of electoral competition and wait for an easier opportunity for a win. It is because of…

In a campaign the ability to get organized can make or break a campaign. When a candidate is an incumbent they have a stronger campaign strategy and will put together an expensive and efficient campaign. According to Herrnson “The 2010 election of nine-term representative Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who won with at least 75 percent of the vote in every one of his elections”(76). Campaigns like Jerrold Nadler are structurally different than those of challengers and open-seats. Challengers have found…

As we have learned in our text, incumbents are more often than not re-elected to the U.S. Congress in high rates. In Understanding American Government: California Edition the author states that “incumbency is even more of an asset to members of congress than it is to presidents.” But why might this be? I believe that the system of American government gives incumbents an almost unfair advantage when it comes to the acquisition of campaign funds as well as helpful media exposure. As we have…

strong on the other side; not many make it through, but those that do come out with the experience and resources necessary to make it through the political cycle for as long as they desire, thus giving them an incredible advantage over the newcomers to the political game. The ultimate goal of any congressmen is to achieve reelection, and such a venture could not be easier for incumbent members of congress: those already in office have already amassed name recognition, have ample funds to…

In general, incumbents tend to normally get reelected, rather than any new opponent they may face gaining office. This can happen for any number of reasons. For one, the incumbents normally have more money to run a successful campaign in their districts. These campaigns will generally be stronger than any rivals campaign would be. Another reason is that the constituents already know about the incumbent and what they stand for. Incumbents have a strong, and normally positive, name reputation that…

of Adult and Dislocated Worker funds to provide for the federal share of the cost of provision for Incumbent Worker Training. Incumbent Worker Training needs to take into account the subsequent factors: • The characteristics of the participants in the program; • The relationship of the training to the competitiveness of a participant and the employer; and • Other factors the State or Local Boards may determine appropriate (e.g., the number of employees take part in the training, wage, and…

Although approval ratings in Congress are consistently low, incumbents are continuously being re-elected at high rates. There are several reasons to explain why this phenomenon is taking place; this is taking place due to the lack of citizen knowledge in a democracy as well as the incumbent bias. Many Americans, lack basic citizen knowledge of democracy. Constituents make the conscious effort to not be informed in politics. When they are uninformed it’s hard to make a political decision,…

Incumbent and Challenger Vote Shares The SURE model also predicts the INC and BJP vote shares when they are incumbents and challengers. In making these predictions the methodology that was used took the following form. Using the coefficients of the INC equation (shown in the first panel of Table 5.1), the predicted INC vote share in each of these constituencies was computed and, then, averaged, first when it was supposed that all the INC candidates in the 2,684 constituencies were incumbents and…

victory cannot be attributed to his high levels of campaign spending. Perhaps spending such a large amount of money on his campaign did impact the election outcome, but his campaign spending was enabled and influenced by his incumbency. In other words, since Walker’s spending was caused by his incumbency status, the incumbency advantage was what ultimately influenced the outcome of the 2012 recall election. Since incumbents have better access to financial resources, many good quality…

Congressional stagnation originates from the theory that Congress has become stagnant through the continuous re-election of the majority of incumbents, which preserves the status quo. This is an extremely big issue that’s affecting our political system negatively and it needs to be directly addressed. The roots of this problem stems from the fact that there is no public campaign finance available for Congressional candidates. Unlike presidential candidates, the campaign finance legislation does…