The Element of Surprise: Election Timing and Opposition Preparedness

• In Event: Political Consequences of Election Timing

Abstract

How can incumbent governments benefit when they control the timing of elections? The conventional wisdom is that incumbents gain an advantage by timing elections to coincide with favorable economic conditions. An alternative mechanism that has received less attention is the element of surprise: the incumbent's ability to exploit the opposition's lack of election preparedness. This paper theorizes and empirically tests this surprise mechanism using candidate-level data from Japanese House of Representative elections (1955-2017). The results show that in surprise elections, opposition parties recruit fewer, lower quality candidates, spend less money campaigning, coordinate their candidates less effectively, and ultimately receive fewer votes and seats. Evidence from fixed effects models and exogenously timed by-elections further suggest that surprise matters more in shorter, competitive election campaigns and helps incumbents more with confronting inter-party as opposed to intra-party competition. These findings add to our understanding of how strategic election timing can undermine electoral accountability.

Author

• Charles McClean, University of Michigan