Dueling Incumbent House Elections, 1843-2018

• Author: H. Benjamin Ashton,Michael H. Crespin,Seth C. McKee
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221116618
• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Date: 01 November 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Politics Research

2022, Vol. 50(6) 735–742

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221116618

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Dueling Incumbent House Elections,

1843-2018

H. Benjamin Ashton

1

, Michael H. Crespin

1

, and Seth C. McKee

2



Abstract

Throughout American history some members of Congress are beset with the unfortunate predicament of facing a fellow incumbent

in their bids for reelection. One culprit is responsible for these atypical contests: redistricting. Using district and sub-district level data,

this research note provides the f‌irst systematic coverage of all dueling incumbent general election U.S. House races from 1843 to

2018. We chronicle and analyze when we expect to see dueling incumbent races, the ability of parties to target out-party incumbents,

and the electoral value of previously represented constituents for incumbents in reconf‌igured districts. Although incumbent duels are

uncommon, they comprise a substantial number of incumbent general election defeats in contests following redistricting.

Keywords

house elections, dueling incumbents, redistricting, electoral retrenchment

In this research note we provide the f‌irst comprehensive

examination of the 73 dueling incumbent (incumbent vs.

incumbent) general election contests in the U.S. House of

Representatives from 1843 to 2018.

1

Although these types of

races are infrequent, since 1952 they account for 22% of

incumbent defeats in general elections held immediately after

a decennial redistricting.

2

In this exploratory and primarily

descriptive account we consider: (1) the determinants of the

emergence of dueling incumbent races such as redistricting,

reapportionment, and partisan targeting, (2) the role of par-

tisan mapmakers in eliminating out-party incumbents when

redistricting occurs, and (3) evaluate the support incumbents

garner among the voters they retain following a redistricting.

Dueling Incumbent Races, 1843–2018

Dueling incumbent races are seldom mentioned in extant lit-

erature on congressional elections

3

, and the few previous ac-

counts characterized their existence as a “failure”of redistricting

strategies that come with (by def‌inition) a high rate of incumbent

defeat (e.g., Bullock, 1975;Bullock, 2010). We expect dueling

incumbent races to primarily manifest in two instances, as

described in Figure 1. First, redistricting is a causal factor for

observing incumbent versus incumbent contests. Changing

district lines forces incumbents to decide where to run for re-

election and all 73 of our dueling incumbent contests take place

in the conf‌ines of redrawn congressional boundaries.

Next, we expect to see more duels in states that lose a

district, an event we call electoral retrenchment. When this

occurs, the number of incumbents is greater than the number

of districts so we should observe a duel if all incumbents

decide to run for reelection. Our data support this hypothesis

with 63% of our cases in states experiencing electoral re-

trenchment. The rest of the dueling incumbent matchups

happened when states either gained a seat (10%) or retained

the same number of seats following reapportionment (27%).

We also expect to observe more duels when one party draws

district lines since they can “target”the out-party by drawing

boundaries unfavorable to an incumbent of that party. Our

data show that 68% of duels occur when one party controls

redistricting. The remaining contests occur in comparatively

less partisan settings, including when district boundaries are

reconf‌igured by the courts, commissions, or via a divided

state government (e.g., different parties in control of the

legislative chambers and/or the governorship).

Figure 2 presents all 73 contests in our dataset. Twenty-

eight different states had at least one dueling incumbent

contest. Populous states consistently losing districts have the most

duels: Ohio with 10, followed by Pennsylvania (8), New York (5),

and then several states with 4. Forty-one dueling incumbent races

occurred in states losing at least one seat through reapportionment.

Another f‌ive contests operated under the condition of electoral

retrenchment because an at-large seat (or seats) was subsequently

1

Department of Political Science, Carl Albert Congressional Research and

Studies Center, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

2

Department of Political Science, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK,

USA

Corresponding Author:

Seth C. McKee, Department of Political Science, Oklahoma State University,

Stillwater, OK 74078, USA.

Email: mckee@okstate.edu