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The Role of Majority Status in Close Election Studies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 April 2023
Abstract
Many studies exploit close elections in a regression discontinuity framework to identify partisan effects, that is, the effect of having a given party in office on some outcome. We argue that, when conducted on single-member districts, such design may identify a compound effect: the partisan effect, plus the majority status effect, that is, the effect of being represented by a member of the legislative majority. We provide a simple strategy to disentangle the two, and test it with simulations. Finally, we show the empirical relevance of this issue using real data.
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- © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology
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Edited by Jeff Gill
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Alpino and Crispino supplementary material
Alpino and Crispino supplementary material
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