Valence politics and electoral choice in a new democracy: The case of Taiwan

After two peaceful alternations of political power in a single decade, Taiwan is a democratic success story, demonstrating levels of party competition, turnout rates and patterns of civic engagement similar to those in mature Western democracies. What factors drive electoral choice in Taiwan's new democracy? This paper addresses this question by testing rival models of voting behavior using the Taiwan Elections and Democratization Study (TEDS) 2008 presidential election survey data and the 2010 mayoral election survey data. Analyses show that, similar to their counterparts in mature democracies, Taiwanese voters place more emphasis on the performance of political parties and their leaders in delivering policies designed to address valence issues concerning broadly shared policy goals than on position issues or more general ideological stances that divide the electorate. Findings demonstrating the strength of the valence politics model of electoral choice in Taiwan closely resemble the results of analyses of competing models of voting behavior in Western countries such as Great Britain and the United States.     

Candidate and Party Strategies in Two-Stage Elections Beginning with a Primary

In the United States and Latin America, candidates for national and state-level office frequently must win primary elections in order to advance to the general election. We model policy and valence issues for office-seeking candidates facing such two-stage elections. We determine a Nash equilibrium for the candidates' optimal strategies, and we find that holding a primary is likely to increase a party's chances of winning the general election, particularly in situations where valence issues that involve the candidates' campaigning skills and that are not known prior to the campaign are more salient than policy issues. Furthermore, we find that primary elections are especially likely to benefit parties that expect to be underdogs in the general election. Our conclusions are directly relevant to U.S. politics and by extension to the strategic decisions that many Latin American parties currently confront, about whether it is strategically desirable to hold primaries.     

Critical Election in the Wake of an Economic and Political Crisis: Realignment of Icelandic Party Voters?

A critical election is generally defined as one in which the decisive results of voting reveal a sharp alternation of pre‐existing cleavage(s) and voting patterns, and the dealignment or realignment made between parties is lasting. A critical election can be caused by various factors and in this article the authors analyse whether the global credit crunch in 2008 set things in motion in Iceland, resulting in the 2009 election as a critical election. In that election, the electoral relevance of voters’ psychological attachment to parties and of ideological distances to them weakened, whereas party competence perceptions increased in importance for vote choices. Attachment to parties and ideological distances are factors that are generally stable and change slowly over time, while party competence is influenced by which issues are of importance at the time of the election. This indicates that, in 2009, a restructuring of the determinants of the vote occurred; a pattern of changes that is typical for a critical election. Evidence is found that the importance of party sympathy increases again in the 2013 election, indicating a realignment, rather than a dealignment, occurring in the wake of the 2009 election.     

It’s no longer the economy,stupid! Issue yield at the 2017 German federal election

Abstract

This article demonstrates that the issue-yield concept is able to predict the electoral strategies of mainstream and challenger parties at the 2017 German federal election. While the electorate of mainstream parties favour valence issues, the Greens and the AfD can gain more by concentrating on socio-cultural positional issues. Relying on a unique survey covering 17 positional issues and 10 valence issues as well as an analysis of Twitter accounts, the article shows that contemporary Germany is characterised by a centrifugal competition on the socio-cultural dimension. At the same time, an asymmetric ideological confrontation persists on the socio-economic dimension, because the Left and the SPD still refer to their traditional welfare issues while the bourgeois parties no longer counter this with a contrasting free-market ideology. Thus, the economy is currently not the decisive issue in German politics. Migration, integration, and other socio-cultural issues are rather driving electoral competition.     

Valence Politics in Scotland: Towards an Explanation of the 2007 Election

In this article we use evidence from the Scottish Election Study 2007 to build an explanation for the narrow SNP victory in the Holyrood election. The theoretical focus is on valence models of voting, which are increasingly important in Scotland following dealignment and ideological convergence in the party system, and as Scottish governments flex their executive muscle. Exploring the valence battleground reveals mixed but overall negative evaluations of Labour's performance in government, and suggests advantages for the SNP on issue competence, leadership and party image. Modelling party choice at the individual level shows that key valence variables – performance evaluations, economic competence and party image – have strong and significant effects, unlike hitherto prominent factors like religion, class and national identity. Constitutional preferences are important too, but their effects suggest a further valence link: the SNP's strong showing among voters seeking further devolution but opposed to independence is due in large part to its credentials as a battler for Scottish interests. In contrast, Labour's stand against 'more powers' may have tarnished its own reputation on that score. We conclude that the SNP edged home by persuading enough voters that it had a positive agenda for governing Scotland within the current constitutional arrangements, and that it could deliver on that agenda.     

Yes we can! Valence politics and electoral choice in America, 2008

The claim that the 2008 presidential election was a transformative one is fast becoming part of the conventional wisdom of American politics. Despite the election’s undoubted significance, this paper argues that factors affecting voting decisions were strikingly similar to those operating in many previous presidential elections. Using data from the CCAP six-wave national election survey, we demonstrate that a valence politics model provides a powerful, parsimonious explanation of the ballot decisions Americans made in 2008. As is typical in presidential elections, candidate images had major effects on electoral choice. Controlling for several other relevant factors, racial attitudes were strongly associated with how voters reacted to the candidates. Other models of electoral choice, such as a Downsian issue-proximity model, are also relevant, but their explanatory power is considerably less than that provided by the valence politics model.     

Election manifestos and policy-oriented economic voting

Abstract. Many previous analyses of aggregate-level policy-oriented economic voting hypotheses have been based on expert judgements of incumbents' ideology. These judgements first of all concentrate on long term characteristics of ideological stands and, more importantly, do not reflect parties' positions on economic issues per se. Using parties' arguments on economic issues in their election manifestoes, this article develops a left-right ideology dimension that reflects parties' relative positions on economic issues for 163 elections in 16 countries in the post-World War II period. The analysis suggests that over time there are very stable differences in parties' ideological positions on economic issues. Despite increasing clarity of ideological cleavages on economic issues, and persistent evidence of diverging economic policy outcomes in the literature, no distinct reward and punishment by the electorate is observed, associated with the ideological stands of the incumbents. Accordingly, the policy-oriented economic voting hypothesis is rejected and possible reasons for this phenomenon is discussed.     

A stochastic model of the 2007 Russian Duma election

In this paper we consider the nature of local Nash equilibrium (LNE) for a model of the 2007 Duma election in Russia, using estimates of valence obtained from sociodemographic variables. We then extend this sociodemographic valence model by including institutional valences, the approval by voters of the various institutions, including the President, the Prime Minister, the State Duma and the Federation Council. We show by simulation that the vote maximizing LNE of this general stochastic model were not at the electoral origin. The dominant feature of the election was the influence of approval or disapproval of President Putin on each voter’s political choice.     

Affective polarization and the salience of elections

In this article we analyze the effects of election salience on affective polarization. Campaigns and elections epitomize the moment of maximum political conflict, information spread, mobilization, and activation of political identities and predispositions. We therefore expect that affective polarization will be higher just after an election has taken place. By the same token, as elections lose salience, affective polarization will diminish. We analyze this question using CSES data from 99 post-electoral surveys conducted in 42 countries between 1996 and 2016. Our identification strategy exploits variation in the timing of survey interviews with respect to the election day as an exogenous measure of election salience. The empirical findings indicate that as elections lose salience affective polarization declines. The article further contributes to the debate on the origins of affective polarization by exploring two mechanisms that may account for this relationship: changes in ideological polarization and in the intensity of party identification. Both are relevant mediators, with ideological polarization seemingly playing a more important role.     

Reassessing ideological bias in campaign participation

Until 1964, ideological conservatives tended to participate in presidential campaign activities at higher rates than liberals. Since then, Beck and Jennings (1980, 1984) have shown the variable nature of the participation-ideology relationship, arguing that ideologically extreme candidates have successfully mobilized their followers in particular elections. In this paper, we explain the anomaly of the 1980 election in which strong liberals participated at higher rates despite a very strong conservative on the Republican side. Using data collected over time in 1980 by the University of Michigan's Center for Political Studies (CPS/NES), we broaden the Beck-Jennings model to include participation during the primary season and hypothesize that mobilization of ideological groups may result from ideological candidatesand the competitiveness or closeness of a nomination contest. We find that the ideological candidate model explains general election participation to a significant degree, while competitiveness considerations are more important for mobilization during the primaries.     

When Gender Matters: Macro-dynamics and Micro-mechanisms

Does candidate sex matter to general election outcomes? And if so, under what conditions does sex exert an effect? Research conducted over the past 40 years has asserted an absence of a sex effect, consistently finding that women fare as well as men when they run. Nevertheless, this scholarship neglects sex-based differences in candidate valence, or non-policy characteristics such as competence and integrity that voters intrinsically value in their elected officials. If women candidates hold greater valence than men, and if women’s electoral success stems from this valence advantage, then women candidates would be penalized if they lacked the upper hand on valence. Recent research at the macro-level reports a 3 % vote disadvantage for women candidates when valence is held constant (Fulton, Political Res Q 65(2):303–314, 2012), but is based on only one general election year. The present study replicates Fulton’s (Political Res Q 65(2):303–314, 2012) research using new data from a more recent general election and finds a consistent 3 % vote deficit for women candidates. In addition, this paper extends these findings theoretically and empirically to the micro-level: examining who responds to variations in candidate sex and valence. Male independent voters, who often swing general elections, are equally supportive of women candidates when they have a valence advantage. Absent a relative abundance of valence, male independents are significantly less likely to endorse female candidates. If correct, the gender affinity effect is asymmetrical: male independent voters are more likely to support men candidates, and less likely to support women, but female independents fail to similarly discriminate.     

Democracy and Bureaucracy: How their Quality Matters for Popular Satisfaction

This study focuses on how citizens’ satisfaction with democracy is affected by system factors related to the input side of the democratic system, i.e. the electoral dimension, as well as to factors related to the output side, i.e. the quality of government. The study investigates the extent to which different election system characteristics and degrees of policy representation (in terms of ideological congruence between voters and representatives) and the presence of effective, professional and impartial governmental institutions are related to citizens’ satisfaction with the way democracy works. The study uses data from CSES on individual voters and party system characteristics together with data on governmental institutions from the QoG Institute. Overall, the results indicate that factors such as government effectiveness are of greater importance for citizens’ satisfaction with the way democracy functions, compared to factors like ideological congruence on the input side. Impartial and effective bureaucracies matter more than representational devices.     

Economic voting theory: Testing new dimensions

Classical economic voting theory has received considerable empirical support. Voters reward the incumbent for good times, punish it for bad. But the success of this paradigm, which views the economy as strictly a valence issue, has crowded out testing of other theoretical dimensions. In particular, positional and patrimonial economic voting have hardly been examined. The former concerns the different preferences voters have on economic policy issues, such as progressive taxation. The latter concerns the place of voters in the economic structure itself, not merely as members of a social class but as actual property owners. Through analysis of a special battery of economic items, from a 2008 US presidential election survey, we demonstrate that the economy was important to voters in three ways: valence, position, and patrimony. Taken together, these dimensions go far as an explanation of vote choice, at least with respect to the short-term forces acting on this political behavior.     

Identification,Agreement and Government Performance: The Relative Impact on Voting*

Debating explanations of electoral behavior, American scholars have focused on three main theories: The identification model relying on underlying loyalty of voters towards specific parties; the political agreement or proximity model assuming a rational calculation of parties' ideological positions or stand on salient political issues as the yardstick for choice of party; and the investment model relying on voters' ability to calculate which government alternative will bring most utility for the individual voter. Examining these theories with the use of Norwegian data from the elections of 1965, 1969 and 1977, we find that the identification model is far the most powerful in predicting individual voting behavior. This model also has an edge in explaining support for the individual parties and the total distribution of voters. However, at the major postwar government election in 1965, the investment model certainly is of importance, and at the election in 1977 the significance of the proximity model has increased.     

A Broad Alliance of Civil Society Organizations on Climate Change Mitigation: Political Strength or Legitimizing Support?

One hundred and one very different organizations joined together prior to the election for the Norwegian parliament in 2013 in order to make climate change mitigation the most important issue in the election campaign. The alliance (CE2013) agreed on six political demands relating to mitigation. In this article, we categorize the 101 organizations and discuss their identity and objectives according to these demands. The analysis demonstrates that even though a broad variety of organizations joined the campaign, their commitment was rather weak. Few of the organizations justify their involvement in CE2013 by all six political demands, hence demonstrating that climate change mitigation is a valence issue.     

Never a dull moment: Pim Fortuyn and the Dutch parliamentary election of 2002

The 2002 parliamentary election in the Netherlands will always be associated with the name of Pim Fortuyn. His murder only nine days before the election was the first political assassination in the Netherlands in more than 300 years. The sudden success of the new party he had founded, coupled with the major losses for the Labour and Liberal parties, made this an historic election. This article attempts to understand the motivations of the voters at this election, in particular the voters of the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). It is first shown that the conventional wisdom, which assumes voting based on religion and social class, and voting along ideological issue lines, has lost its ability to explain voter behaviour in the Netherlands. An explanation based on retrospective economic voting is also rejected. The success of the LPF is accounted for by the popularity of Fortuyn and his appeal among those who had cynical attitudes towards government or who were dissatisfied with the performance of the incumbent government. The popularity of Fortuyn is shown to have been related to political issues, in particular those relating to asylum seekers and the integration of foreigners in the country.     

Small winners and big losers: strategic party behaviour in the 2017 Dutch general election

Abstract

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.     

Election Administration in Crisis: An Early Look at Lessons from Bush versus Gore

The 2000 presidential election exposed serious election-administration deficiencies that affected the presidential election and the confidence of the American people in the way elections are administered. The ensuing controversies also exposed significant issues in judicial—administrative relations. This article examines the factors involved not only in Florida, but also in the nation, and discusses lessons for the future of election administration and for public administration generally.     

New Labour,New Protest? How the Liberal Democrats Profited from Blair's Mistakes

Traditionally, the Liberal Democrats and their predecessors have gained seats from Labour and have always seen their support fall during a Labour government. In 2005, and in by-elections from 2003, the party reversed that trend. Yet, apart from particular success amongst Muslims, the resulting change in the social geography of Liberal Democrat support was not accompanied by any major change in the social and ideological character of the individuals who voted for it. The Liberal Democrats remain very much a party whose fortunes rests on its ability to garner protest votes; they are now simply able to secure such support from previous Labour voters too, perhaps because of their perceived ideological proximity to Labour. If the party's support rests once again at the next election on support for centre-left principles, this raises difficult issues if the party appears to be willing to put the Conservatives into government.     

The ‘new’ rhetoric of new labour in comparative perspective: A three‐country discourse analysis

Over the past two decades, social democratic‐labour parties (SDLPs) have been confronted by various challenges which have had a dramatic impact upon their ideological orientation. These include, not least, emerging challenger parties, as well as the Neo‐Liberal discourse of the New Right. In this article, we compare the ideological positioning of three parties in Sweden, Germany, and particularly Great Britain. We conclude that the ideological profile of ‘New Labour’ now largely mirrors those of other SDLPs. The results are based upon a content analysis of the 1994 (Germany and Sweden) and 1997 (Great Britain) election rhetoric in party manifestos and television debates. The analysis centres on the extent to which the three SDLPs refer to the discourses of socialism, the welfare state, neo‐liberalism and ecologism.