Legislative Candidate Selection and Incumbent Renomination in Mexico

Abstract

Despite the abundant literature on consecutive reelection, few works examine how party leaders’ preferences over incumbent traits can affect the future positions of sitting legislators. This paper examines how consecutive reelection and strong party leader control over candidate selection combine to promote certain types of politicians for renominations for reelection, while others are consigned to candidacies for lower posts or left out of the selection process. We use Mexico’s first experience with consecutive reelection since 1932 to better understand how incumbents’ inte-rests and the demands of party leaders shape candidacy outcomes by examining whether the incumbents from the 2018-2021 term were able to win a renomination bid or were sent to a higher or lower post.