This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008)

Look up incumbent in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The incumbent, in politics, is the existing holder of a political office. This term is usually used in reference to elections, in which races can often be defined as being between an incumbent and non-incumbent(s). For example, in the 2004 United States presidential election, George W. Bush was the incumbent, because he was the president in the current term while the election sought to determine the president for the following term. A race without an incumbent is referred to as an open seat.

Etymology[link]

The word "incumbent" is derived from the Latin verb incumbere, literally meaning "to lean or lay upon" with the present participle stem incumbent-, "leaning a variant of encumber,^[1] while encumber is derived from the root cumber,^[2] most appropriately defined: "4. To occupy obstructively or inconveniently; to block fill up with what hinders freedom of motion or action; to burden, load."^[3]

Politics[link]

In general, incumbents have structural advantages over challengers during elections. The timing of elections may be determined by the incumbent instead of a set schedule. For most political offices, the incumbent often has more name recognition due to their previous work in the office. Incumbents also have easier access to campaign finance, as well as government resources (such as the franking privilege) that can be indirectly used to boost a campaign. An election (especially for a legislature) in which no incumbent is running is often called an open seat; because of the lack of incumbency advantage, these are often amongst the most hotly-contested races in any election.

In the United States, incumbents traditionally win their party's nomination to run for office. Unseating an incumbent president, senator or other figure during a primary election is very difficult, and even in the general election, incumbents have a very strong record. For instance, the percentage of incumbents who win reelection after seeking it in the U.S. House of Representatives has been over 80% for over 50 years, and is often over 90%.^[4] However, this rate may be artificially inflated, as incumbents that feel unlikely to win may decline to run for reelection. Additionally, shifts in congressional districts due to reapportionment or other longer-term factors may make it more or less likely for an incumbent to win re-election over time. For example, a Democratic incumbent in historically conservative rural Texas would have less chance of winning than a Democratic incumbent in historically liberal New York City, because Texas has shifted away from the Democratic Party in terms of voting while New York City has shifted toward the same party (see also Congressional stagnation in the United States).

However, there exist scenarios in which the incumbency factor itself leads to the downfall of the incumbent. Popularly known as the anti-incumbency factor, situations of this kind occur when the incumbent has proven himself not worthy of office during his tenure and the challenger demonstrates this fact to the voters. An anti-incumbency factor can also be responsible for bringing down incumbents who have been in office for many successive terms in spite of performance indicators, simply because the voters are convinced by the challenger of a need for change. Nick Panagakis, a pollster, coined what he dubbed the "incumbent rule" in 1989--that any voter who claims to be undecided towards the end of the election will probably end up voting for the challenger^[5].

When newcomers vie to fill an open office, voters tend to compare and contrast the candidates' qualifications, issues positions and personal characteristics in a relatively straightforward way. Elections featuring an incumbent, on the other hand, are as Guy Molyneux puts it, "fundamentally a referendum on the incumbent."^[6] Voters will first grapple with the record of the incumbent. Only if they decide to "fire" the incumbent do they begin to evaluate whether the challenger is an acceptable alternative. At the same time, if the challenger is determined to be wholly unacceptable, voters might reluctantly vote for the incumbent.

Business[link]

In business the term "incumbent" is used for the largest company in a certain industry, for instance the traditional phone company in telecommunications, typically called the "incumbent operator". In a sales process, such as public tender, incumbent may also refer to the vendor that has the largest existing commercial relationship with the issuer of the tender.

In large corporations it is the incumbent who is the holder of an office, or one that occupies a particular position.

See also[link]

• Lists of office-holders
• List of current heads of state and government
• Outgoing president

Notes[link]

References[link]

Politics portal

• Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. Print.

Robert Kenner is an American film and television screenwriter, television director, film director, film producer, and television producer.

His career began in 1971 as an assistant cinematographer, and produced his first motion picture, 3:15 - The Moment of Truth, in 1984 (although it was not released until 1986). His second feature film did not come until 1991's Lonely Hearts.

His first breakout project was the televised documentary The Lost Fleet of Guadalcanal, which he produced for the National Geographic Society and which aired in 1993 on PBS.^[1] The following year, he directed and produced Russia's Last Tsar for National Geographic and PBS.^[2][3] He also directed and produced America's Endangered Species: Don't Say Good-bye in 1996.^[2][4] The International Documentary Association presented the picture with the Strand Award for Best Documentary.^[5]

Kenner began a long association with the award-winning PBS documentary television program American Experience in 1998. That year he directed and produced the widely reviewed Influenza, 1918 (about the 1918 flu pandemic)^[6] and followed it up with John Brown's Holy War (about abolitionist John Brown) in 2001.^[7][8] His first documentary which he wrote, directed and produced was War Letters, which aired on American Experience in 2001. The documentary is based on the 2001 New York Times best-selling book War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars by historian Andrew Carroll.^[8][9] He produced the episode, "The Road to Memphis," for the 2003 PBS documentary series, The Blues,^[10] and in 2005 produced and directed the Vietnam War documentary, Two Days in October.^[11][12][13] The documentary was the season premiere of American Experience.^[13] The film, which is based on David Maraniss' book They Marched into Sunlight, looks at the parallels between a Viet Cong ambush of a U.S. Army patrol (and the subsequent cover-up of the loss by the American military) and a violent clash between police and student protesters at the University of Wisconsin–Madison—events which occurred 24 hours apart in October 1967.^[12] The episode was nominated for and won the award for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking at the 2006 Emmy Awards.^[14][15]

In 2008, Kenner produced and directed the documentary film, Food, Inc., which examines large-scale agricultural food production in the United States, concluding that the meat and vegetables produced by this type of economic enterprise leads to inexpensive but environmentally harmful and unhealthy food.^[16]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Robert Kenner at the Internet Movie Database
• Robert Kenner at the TCM Movie Database
• Robert Kenner Films Web site