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Incumbent Party Reelection in Australia, Canada, and the United States: An Exponential Decay Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2022

Richard J. Heggen
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico, USA
Alfred G. Cuzán
Affiliation:
University of West Florida, USA

Abstract

Exponential functions, widely used in the physical sciences, also have been used to model political phenomena. To our knowledge, however, this tool has not been used to replicate the electoral survival of the government or administration in several democracies. This article reports that an exponential survival model is a good fit for the reelection rate of the party that controls the executive office in states, territories, or provinces in three countries: Australia, Canada, and the United States.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

The authors’ previous collaborations yielded a micropolitical model of socially efficient governments and a fiscal model of US presidential and UK parliamentary elections.

References

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Supplementary material: Link

Heggen and Cuzán Dataset

Link