The Land of Kings: The Size and Sources of Incumbency Advantage in Canadian Cities

The Department of Politics and Public Administration invites interested individuals to attend a research talk by Dr. Jack Lucas (University of Calgary), titled:  The Land of Kings: The Size and Sources of Incumbency Advantage in Canadian Cities.

Incumbent candidates dominate Canadian city elections, but we currently know very little about the size and sources of the municipal incumbency advantage.

Using a new dataset of complete mayoral and council election results in four Canadian cities (Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Winnipeg) from the late 1800s to the present, this talk outlines patterns of incumbent success across electoral district types (wards vs. at-large systems), party systems (partisan vs. non-partisan elections), and time.

Dr. Lucas describes substantial incumbent re-election rates, which vary modestly across institutional contexts and have grown substantially over time. He then leveraged close races to estimate the specific role of having won office, as opposed to a candidate’s fixed quality and characteristics, in producing high incumbent re-election rates. Dr. Lucas demonstrates that these officeholder benefits play a substantial role in the success of municipal incumbents.