Incumbency effects in government and opposition: Evidence from Germany

- We study incumbency of German district candidates in government and opposition.
- We use a validated regression discontinuity design based on close elections.
- We discuss logical limitations of studying incumbency in government and opposition.
- We find heterogeneous incumbency effects - average effects are not informative.
- We argue that a post-communist party after reunification is behind the heterogeneity.

Do district incumbents in an election have an advantage, and if so, do these advantages depend on which party is in government? We estimate the incumbency effect for the direct district candidates in German federal and state elections using a regression discontinuity design (RDD). When studying the heterogeneity in these effects, we find that incumbents from both large parties, the center-right CDU and the center-left SPD, have an advantage only if the SPD is in government. This effect is robust and shows even in state elections that are unrelated to federal elections.