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Stephen Harper is losing incumbent lawmakers at one of the highest rates in decades, and history suggests that weighs heavily on the Canadian Prime Minister’s chances of winning another term in power later this year.

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Of 166 Conservatives elected to the House of Commons during Harper’s first majority in 2011, at least 46 are not running for the party this fall. It’s the third-highest dropout rate since the Second World War and the highest since 1993, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Polls show a tight three-way race heading into the Oct. 19 election as Harper seeks to become the first Canadian prime minister in more than a century to win a fourth-straight term. However, a high attrition rate correlates to a loss of seats, the data show. Those who have gone through it agree.

“It has an immediate impact,” said veteran MP Rodger Cuzner, whose Liberals lost 26.2 percent of incumbents before the 2004 election and went on to lose their majority. “There’s a benefit to incumbency. You lose that corporate memory, you lose the opportunity to benefit from name recognition.”