Loss of office despite office bonus? Change in the office of prime minister after state elections (1991 to 2022)

from Franziska CarstensenJakob Hirn and Kevin W. Settles

DOI: 10.36206/BP2022.02

The 2021 federal election marked the first election at federal level in which no incumbent head of government stood for re-election. While an incumbency bonus could be established for state governments, the question of whether heads of state government benefit from an incumbency bonus has been little analysed to date. The starting point of this study
was the previously unexamined perception that incumbent prime ministers lose comparatively rarely in state elections. Based on an analysis of all state parliamentary elections over the past 31 years (1991 to May 2022), the study analysed how often it is possible to speak of an incumbency bonus at state level and which factors are increasingly associated with the loss of office or re-election. The loss of office of incumbent heads of government was an exception in the period analysed. Accordingly, prime ministers remained in office longer than coalitions at state level. Furthermore, it was potentially a burden for the subsequent parliamentary election if prime ministers were elected to office by the state parliament during an election period. It is worth noting that state parliaments more frequently elected a new person to office during an election period than after a state parliamentary election.

The most important facts in brief:

1. Between 1991 and May 2022, incumbent prime ministers only lost office relatively rarely due to an election defeat; this happened after 19 out of 112 state parliamentary elections, which corresponds to a share of 17 per cent.
2. There was a new Prime Minister after approximately every fourth state election, as there were also six resignations of incumbents following state election results that were not considered successful enough and three incumbents did not stand for re-election.
3. More new heads of government were elected to office by the respective state parliament during an election period than after a state parliamentary election, with all but one of those elected to office during an election period belonging to the same party as their predecessor.
4. Succession during an election period proved to be a potential burden after the predecessor had moved on to another position, usually in federal politics. In five out of eleven cases, the head of government who took office in this way lost the post after the next state election.
5. A particularly large number of minister presidents (all from the SPD) lost their office during the red-green federal government under Gerhard Schröder (1998 to 2005); among the federal states, North Rhine-Westphalia was most frequently affected by changes of office after state elections, namely three times.