Caselli Francisco author Cunningham Tom author Morelli Massimo author Columbia University. Political Science Moreno de Barreda Ines author Columbia University. Economics originator contributor text Working papers New York Department of Economics, Columbia University 2012 Much literature on political behavior treats politicians as motivated by reelection, choosing actions to signal their types to voters. We identify a novel implication of incumbent signalling. Because incumbents only care about clearing a reelection hurdle, signals will tend to cluster just above the threshold needed for reelection. This generates a skew distribution of signals leading to an incumbency advantage in the probability of election. We also solve for the optimal threshold when voters have the ability to commit. Political science 1213-05 http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:15207 English NNC NNC 2012-11-07 11:08:15 -0500 2012-11-07 11:15:13 -0500 9209 eng