Partisanship, the economy and the effects of incumbency through sub-national elections: evidence from Portugal

Abstract

This research investigates the impact of legislative incumbency in municipal elections for 305 Portuguese municipalities, in 8 sub-national elections, from 1985 to 2013. Among other contributions, this research adds to the existing literature by studying the effect of national economic variables in municipal elections, as well as partisan effects, using a two-way fixed group and time effects model. Despite being ambiguous for the left of centre party in terms of a national incumbency penalty, the empirical results suggest that PSD is penalised in the local elections if in government and that both the state of national economy and partisan effects on the vote shares of the two main Portuguese parties are mixed for municipal elections.