Regression Discontinuity in Elections
Regression discontinuity in elections is a quasi-experimental design that exploits the sharp winning threshold in electoral contests to estimate causal effects of holding office. Just above the threshold a candidate or party wins; just below, it loses. In very close races, which side ends up just over the line is plausibly as good as random, so comparing the later outcomes of bare winners and bare losers identifies the causal effect of winning — most famously the incumbency advantage — without confounding by candidate or district quality.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Lee, D. S. (2008). Randomized Experiments from Non-random Selection in U.S. House Elections. Journal of Econometrics, 142(2), 675–697. · DOI 10.1016/j.jeconom.2007.05.004
- Lee, D. S., & Lemieux, T. (2010). Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 48(2), 281–355. · DOI 10.1257/jel.48.2.281
- Eggers, A. C., Fowler, A., Hainmueller, J., Hall, A. B., & Snyder, J. M. (2015). On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects: New Evidence from Over 40,000 Close Races. American Journal of Political Science, 59(1), 259–274. · DOI 10.1111/ajps.12127
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