Replication Data for: Is the Incumbent Curse the Incumbent’s Fault? Strategic Behavior and Negative Incumbency Effects in Young Democracies

Recent studies based on regression discontinuity designs have detected negative incumbency effects in new democracies. However, regression discontinuity studies rely on analyses of close elections where actors are likely to behave strategically in ways that might undermine positive incumbency effects or exaggerate negative incumbency effects. In particular, (a) voters who supported second-loser parties in close elections may switch to the first loser in order to unseat an incumbent, while (b) higher-level officials such as governors may strategically target municipalities in which their party lost or won by a small margin. Evidence from municipal elections in Mexico is largely consistent with these claims — the vote share of second-loser parties drops disproportionately in close elections and negative incumbency effects are attenuated in the presence of copartisan governors — but the size of estimated effects suggests that strategic behavior is on its own not sufficient to account for the “incumbency curse.”