Some Evidence on the Effect of Incumbency in Ontario Provincial Elections

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the constituency results in recent Ontario provincial elections in order to estimate the impact of incumbency on the percentage of the vote received by each party. Regression results indicate that incumbency had a significant impact in the three elections studied, adding between six and 12 percentage points to the popular vote for the incumbent's party in a given riding. Moreover, these results are robust, persisting overtime and across parties, and not varying significantly for a variety of specifications of the underlying model.