Try, Try Again: Candidate Persistence in California Local Politics

• In Event: Unpacking Democracy in Urban Politics

Abstract

When do unsuccessful candidates give up their quest for office? And if they do try again, is it for the same office or a different one? In this paper we track the local office-seeking behavior of candidates in California over nearly 25 years to understand candidate persistence, or repeated efforts to win political offices. In addition to a general focus on candidate persistence, we seek to understand whether there are gender-related differences in decisions to persist, and for what offices.

Our dataset includes information on all candidates who ran for local, state, or congressional office between 1996 and 2019. Our coding scheme includes individual identifiers which allows us to track candidate persistence over time. Because democracy relies on a steady stream of people willing to put themselves forward as candidates, our results will shed important new light on the behavior of those seeking to serve their local communities as elected officials.

Author

• Timothy B. Krebs, University of New Mexico