Why does the incumbent candidate have an advantage?

Question

I’ve always read about the incumbent advantage, but I don’t understand why that would exist. Wouldn’t an incumbent have to demonstrate what s/he has accomplished in office versus a newcomer who could make any claim since the burden of proof won’t be on them?

In: Other

Answer 1

When someone wins an election, they’ve already spent a lot of time and money promoting themself and their name to the public, using campaign funds. 

Then as an elected official they can use government money to set up their legislative office. 

Legislative money has restrictions on how it can be spent, you can’t use legislative office money to encourage people to vote for you, or at least not directly. You can however buy a big sign with your name on it for your office, and buy official stationery and sometimes giveaways and swag, also with your name on it, as long as it has a “legislative” purpose. So letterhead, envelopes, sometimes calendars, and booklets such as copies of the constitution or leaflets about government services. 

You also get a teamed of legislative staff who answer calls and respond to letters and emails, and help solve problems for constituents. This is all done to help people, but also has the added bonus of promoting your name. 

At the same time that your legislative team is working to help people and send out thousands of government related letters with your name on them, you can also continue to hire a campaign team using campaign money to continue to get the word out about your name and what you’re doing. Campaign money CAN of course be used to tell people to vote for you. 

There should legally be no coordination between your legislative team and your campaign team, but you essentially have two teams of people and two separate budgets that are able to promote your work in different ways. 

The other advantages and incumbent has is data collected over time. A good campaign collects solid data about where people live, what party they’re registered to, how receptive they were to mailers, calls, door knocks, polling, etc. A new candidate can collect this data but an incumbent has more of it and can target campaign resources more effectively to swing votes and to drive turnout. 

Any new candidate doesn’t have the benefit of two full campaign cycles and a legislative cycle behind them, hence the incumbent usually has an advantage in terms of name recognition and resources at their disposal.