Determinants of Incumbent Electoral Success: Evidence from 30 Years of Irish Elections

Abstract

We examine the determinants of incumbent electoral success among members of Ireland’s lower house of parliament, Dáil Éireann, over a time-period covering seven General Elections (1992 to 2020). We utilise multiple sources to create a dataset linking incumbent politicians’ electoral outcomes to personal characteristics, constituency and election-specific characteristics, as well as a range of constituency-level socioeconomic variables. Our analysis reveals a number of important factors in determining the re-election success of politicians. Notably, being a woman reduces an incumbent’s chances of re-election by 10 percentage points, even after controlling for a wide range of other potentially important factors. Holding a senior ministerial position is found to significantly boost an incumbent’s re-election prospects, while being a junior minister has no impact. However, absent a senior ministerial position, being a member of a ruling government party or coalition is associated with significantly lower re-election success. We construct a measure of competitiveness and find that an incumbent in a more competitive constituency is less likely to be elected, while past performance, as measured by the order in which an incumbent is elected in the previous contest, is found to be an important predictor of current success.