Replication data for: Constituency Service and Incumbency Advantage

This Note addresses the long-standing discrepancy between scholarly support for the effect of constituency service on incumbency advantage and a large body of contradictory empirical evidence. I show first that many of the methodological problems noticed in past research reduce to a single methodological problem that is readily resolved. The core of this Note then provides among the first systematic empirical evidence for the constituency service hypothesis. <br /> <br /> Specifically, an extra $10,000 added to the budget of the average state legislator gives this incumbent an additional 1.54 percentage points in the next election (with a 95% confidence interval of 1.14 to 1.94 percentage points). <br /> <br /> See also: <a href= "http://gking.harvard.edu/category/research-interests/applications/incumbency-advantage" target="_blank">Incumbency Advantage</a>.