Why incumbents get re elected

Moreover, members of the U. House and Senate have easy and ready access to the news media and make regular appearances on television and radio programs and are frequently mentioned in newspaper articles and editorials.

As noted, every sitting member of Congress has run at least one successful election campaign for the seat he or she holds. This means, among other things, that a sitting House member or Senator has invaluable experience with creating and managing a campaign organization. It also means that incumbents generally have an effective volunteer organization in place and ready go when it is time to campaign. By far the most widely recognized and probably the most significant advantage enjoyed by sitting members of Congress is the large amounts of campaign contributions they are able to raise, especially in comparison to those who run against them.

The table below summarizes the average campaign resources available to various groups of candidates in House and Senate races in In sum, incumbents tend to win because they enjoy significant advantages over their challengers. The widely-accepted conventional wisdom about these advantages is that they make congressional elections unfair.

It is true that it is difficult to beat an incumbent, but that is generally the case not simply because the incumbent enjoys the perks of office and has a large campaign bank account. Members of Congress are reelected because their constituents have not been provided with a compelling reason to vote for someone else. True, an under-funded candidate is limited in his or her ability to provide voters with such a reason, but when a member of Congress strays too far from the opinions and values of his or her constituents or becomes embroiled in controversy, challengers will find that they are able to raise more than enough money to make sure the voters know about such things.

In reality, incumbents leave office with fair amount of regularity. Each election year, a handful of House members and Senators retire for a variety of reasons—sometimes because they are not confident they could keep their seat if they ran again. And there are a handful of members that are defeated by challengers each campaign cycle.

In any given election the number may seem small, but some elections produce relatively large numbers of new members. Over the course of three or four elections a large portion of the Congress may turn-over in spite of high incumbent success rates in particular election years. Ultimately, the degree to which the people are effectively represented by their members of Congress must be determined at the individual-level. Note: The content of this web page is republished on the Internet by kind permission of Common Cause , March , and is not a copyright of Citizens for United States Direct Initiatives.

Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Copyright Initiatives v Oligarchy Toggle navigation Menu. Since , voters have sent their incumbent House representative back to Washington 93 percent of the time. Senators enjoy only slightly less job security — 82 percent. Academics have speculated on the multiple reasons that congressional incumbents have enjoyed an advantage over the years. Incumbents have traditionally used their positions to win favor with voters by offering a variety of constituent services or by pointing to increased funding they've captured for the home state or district.

More recently, some have argued that redistricting has created politically lopsided seats that strongly favor one party over another. Moreover, as the cost of mounting a political campaign has risen, incumbency in Congress has created an important financial advantage in attracting the money needed to win. Based on the amount of campaign cash both sides have raised so far, Republicans are in a better position to defend their majority in the House than the Democrats are in taking it away.

If the Senate's two independents continue to caucus with them, Democrats only need to pick up two seats to win a majority. And five of the eight seats that are considered "toss-ups" by one or more of the political pundits rating the races are currently held by Democrats.

That may be why Democrats in those races have been busy fundraising. More than Democrats have entered races for open seats or to challenge an incumbent in Senate races. Based on past races, that's not even enough to win the average House seat. Incumbents in Congress are hard to beat — and a lot of it has to do with money John W. Schoen johnwschoen.