The electoral benefits of opportunistic election timing

This study explores the effect of opportunistic election timing on the incumbent's electoral performance. While the existing literature leads to contradictory predictions about the ability of incumbent governments to benefit from strategically timed elections. We advance the theoretical debate by presenting the first cross-national comparative analysis of this question, drawing on an original data set of 318 parliamentary elections in 27 Eastern and Western European countries. In order to identify the effect of opportunistic election calling, we rely on instrumental variable regression. The results demonstrate that opportunistic election calling generates a vote share bonus for the incumbent of about 5 percentage points and is thereby likely to affect electoral accountability.