Term Limits: Keeping Incumbents in Office
By Steven Rogers ~ Download
Abstract: Over twenty states enacted legislative term limits in the 1990s hoping to diminish the powers of incumbency. Term limits forced thousands of state legislators from office, but term limits’ effects on electoral completion are largely unclear. Prior research on single states provides mixed results and fails to consider how term limits affect competition within states. To provide a fuller understanding of how term limits affect state legislative competition, I investigate differences in challenger entry, challenger fundraising, and the incumbency advantage across states with and without term limits, and I uniquely assess the extent to which incumbents face weaker electoral competition as they approach their term limit. I discover that as incumbents approach their final term, they face weaker challengers and enjoy a larger incumbency advantage, suggesting potential opposition candidates strategically wait for seats opened by term limits.