Consideration set models of electoral choice: Theory,method, and application

In electoral research, decisions by voters are usually analysed as if they choose at once from the whole set of all competing parties or candidates. Consideration Set Models (CSM) posit that voters choose differently, namely in two stages. In the first stage, they exclude certain choice options and create a consideration set of viable options, while in the second stage they choose from within this set. This paper, which serves as an introduction to a special symposium about consideration set models of electoral choice, outlines the theoretical foundations of these models and discusses three methodological issues: research design, measurement, and statistical modelling. More specifically, we recommend the use of pre-election panel surveys, direct measures of electoral consideration sets, and statistical models suitable for analysing dichotomous variables and voter-party dyads. Furthermore, we briefly summarise the other contributions to this symposium and sketch some avenues for their application in future research.     

SS: Germany’s federal election in september 2009 – Elections in times of duress – Introduction

This paper introduces the special symposium. It provides (1) an overview of the broad campaign themes; (2) introduces several questions pertinent to German electoral politics; (3) highlights the broader theoretical implications of this symposium for the research literature.     

Symposium on “The nationalization of electoral politics: Frontiers of research”

This editorial introduces the theme of the symposium which addresses the most recent advances in the field of the nationalization of electoral politics. After a decade of an increasing number of contribution in this field, the symposium takes stock of the diversity of applications of nationalization studies, the progress in data collection, and its innovative methods in designs including it as both a dependent and independent variable and analyzing it both for legislative and presidential elections. The editorial reviews the growth and diversification of the literature over time and illustrates in what directions it has evolved mapping out an increasingly rich and complex theory. It links the articles of the symposium to this evolution of the literature and discusses their innovative character.     

Black electoral power,white resistance,and legislative behavior

This paper examines the relationship between black electoral power and white legislative behavior in Mississippi. The initial theoretical foundation is provided by the work of William R. Keech. Keech's implicit model is presented and a more elaborate model which views black payoffs as a function of black electoral power and white resistance, and the political generation of white legislators is developed and tested. A typology of electoral contexts is constructed, and the impact of such contexts on the relationships between the key variables is examined. The findings suggest that the processes responsible for the curvilinear relationship between black electoral power and black payoffs are more complex than previous research has implied and that the nature of electoral contexts may have a substantial influence on these processes.     

The costs of electoral fraud: establishing the link between electoral integrity,winning an election,and satisfaction with democracy

Previous research has shown that voters’ perception of electoral fairness has an impact on their attitudes and behaviors. However, less research has attempted to link objective measurements of electoral integrity on voters’ attitudes about the democratic process. Drawing on data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the Quality of Elections Data, we investigate whether cross-national differences in electoral integrity have significant influences on citizens’ level of satisfaction with democracy. We hypothesize that higher levels of observed electoral fraud will have a negative impact on evaluations of the democratic process, and that this effect will be mediated by a respondent’s status as a winner or loser of an election. The article’s main finding is that high levels of electoral fraud are indeed linked to less satisfaction with democracy. However, we show that winning only matters in elections that are conducted in an impartial way. The moment elections start to display the telltale signs of manipulation and malpractice, winning and losing no longer have different effects on voter’s levels of satisfaction with democracy.     

Can hybrid regimes foster constituencies? Ethnic minorities in Georgian elections, 1992–2012

Do ethnic minorities in postcommunist regimes vote in systematic ways? This paper examines ethnic minority voting in Georgian elections from 1992 to 2012, examining the causes for ethnic minorities' high electoral turnout and ruling party support. Although some argue that electoral fraud is the explanatory cause, other interests, such as experience of poverty and party electoral strategy, help explain minority electoral behaviour. This paper uses statistical methods to examine electoral fraud, as well as OLS regression to investigate the role of socio-economic factors such as urban density or poverty on ethnic minority voting behaviour. The paper also draws from in-country field research to investigate the party strategies and programs in ethnic minority areas during the 2008 parliamentary election.     

Party systems,electoral systems and constraints on corruption

This article explores the relationship between the party system, electoral formulas and corruption. Previous research has focused on the various incentives for political actors to monitor, or engage in corruption based on variations in the electoral formula. However, the electoral formula has mainly served as a proxy for the party system – whether multi-party or two-party. In this analysis, I test directly the relationship between party systems and corruption and in addition, add a degree of nuance to the established line of thinking within this literature. I argue that two-party systems in countries with predominantly single-member district (SMD) electoral formulas will demonstrate lower corruption on average than multi-party systems in SMD countries. However, I argue that this interaction effect does not play out in countries with proportional representation (PR). I test this hypothesis on 70 democratic and semi-democratic countries from 1987 to 2005 and find strong empirical support for the claim that multipartism in SMD countries is associated with higher levels of corruption, while the party system’s relationship with corruption plays no role in PR countries.     

Economic crisis and elections: The European periphery

This paper introduces the articles in the symposium which address the issue of democratic accountability and economic voting in polities on the European periphery. The economic crisis that hit the world economy in 2008 has severely challenged the capacity of governments to steer the national economy and has had a strong impact on their electoral support. The papers discuss whether economic voting and democratic accountability are increasing or, on the other hand, they could be depressed by globalisation and by shifts of ruling competence from the national to the supranational European arena.     

Pursuing Consilience: Using Behavioral Public Administration to Connect Research on Bureaucratic Red Tape,Administrative Burden,and Regulation

Behavioral public administration (BPA) research aspires not only to draw on developments in behavioral science but also, importantly, to address central themes in public administration. By focusing a symposium on bureaucratic red tape, administrative burden, and regulation, we encouraged BPA scholarship to engage with fundamental public administration topics that are also relevant for the broader literature on organizations and management. Indeed, the symposium contributions demonstrate how BPA can better meld the behavioral science and public administration literatures. They expand on existing conceptions of BPA, with respect to both methodology and topical focus, and provide a basis for demarcating what might and might not be usefully described as BPA. The symposium contributions provide a blueprint for how BPA research might usefully evolve and the introduction offers a philosophical reflection on the future development of BPA and behavioral science.     

Return migration,crime, and electoral engagement in Mexico

Since 2006, the Great Recession and tighter migration policies in the U.S. have increased the rates of return migration to Mexico. Scholars debate whether high rates of return motivate greater electoral engagement via the democratic norms returnees may bring back with them. An alternative account holds that returnees are seen as dissimilar by their non-migrant co-nationals, causing returnees to disengage from politics. We contribute to this debate using municipal data on voter turnout and on rates of return migration for the case of Mexico from 2000 to 2010. Relying on an instrumental strategy that exploits migrants’ exposure to changes in unemployment rates as an exogenous predictor for return, we find robust evidence that high rates of return result in less electoral participation in presidential and local elections. Besides, electoral disengagement seems to be intensified by the presence of criminal violence, which surged during our period of analysis. Return migration may have a positive impact on other modes of political participation; but at least when it comes to voting, our research aligns with the pessimistic camp of the debate in that return migration increases electoral apathy.     

Information,special interests,and single-issue voting

The purpose of this paper has been to explore some of the implications of single-issue voting. In general terms, single-issue voting has been shown to be a stabilizing influence on majoritarian decision making. In each case examined, stable equilibria exist under single-issue voting. On the other hand, the normative properties of electoral outcomes are less clear cut. Under pure zealotry, electoral equilibria are uniformly Pareto efficient. However, electoral outcomes are not necessarily Pareto optimal in the case of strategic voting by special interest groups. The results suggest that single-issue voting can, by itself, cause electoral outcomes to depart from the center of the distribution of voter ideal points. Special interest groups might, thus, be served in the ordinary course of electoral politics even if they had no recourse to campaign contributions or rent-seeking activities which induce principal-agent problems. Voters who cast their votes as if they were single-issue voters can affect policy at both the largely ignored margins and in the mainstream of policy formation. Voting is enough.     

Measuring re-election prospects across electoral systems: a general approach applied to Germany

This research note presents a general approach for measuring the electoral safety of individual MPs across electoral systems that is based on predicted re-election probabilities estimated from multilevel logistic regression models. In contrast to existing measures, this method yields estimates on an intuitive and readily comparable probability scale, captures the higher sensitivity of re-election prospects to electoral change in the range of close races, and can accommodate regional differences in context conditions such as volatility. The paper implements the approach for two archetypical electoral systems – first-past-the-post (FPTP) systems and closed-list proportional representation (PR) – and estimates re-election prospects for the FPTP and PR tiers of the German mixed electoral system in all Bundestag elections since 1957. While the empirical data presented here is mainly illustrative, the concluding section highlights various questions that future research can address with the new measure.     

Representative misconduct,voter perceptions and accountability: Evidence from the 2009 House of Commons expenses scandal

This paper examines electoral accountability after the 2009–10 UK expenses scandal. Existing research shows that Members of Parliament (MPs) implicated in the scandal fared only marginally worse in the election than non-implicated colleagues. This lack of electoral accountability for misconduct could have arisen either because voters did not know about their representative's wrongdoing or because they chose not to electorally sanction them. We combine panel survey data with new measures of MP implication in the expenses scandal to test where electoral accountability failed. We find that MP implication influenced voter perceptions of wrongdoing more than expected. In contrast, constituents were only marginally less likely to vote for MPs who were implicated in the scandal. Electoral accountability may therefore be constrained even when information about representative misconduct is easily available and clearly influences voter perceptions.     

Mind the gap(s): Winning,losing, and perceptions of electoral integrity in mixed-member proportional systems

This study investigates whether and how experiences of winning and losing at the ballot box shape voters' views about the integrity of the electoral process in Germany's mixed-member proportional system. Relying on comprehensive data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) 2021, the analysis provides evidence for a consistent winner-loser gap in voters' electoral-integrity perceptions, with electoral losers evaluating the electoral process systematically more negative than electoral winners. Moreover, the analysis shows that the winner-loser gap is particularly pronounced for voters who lost in two consecutive federal elections (‘repeated losers’) as well as for those who suffered electoral defeat with both their list and district votes (‘double losers’). These findings provide novel insights on how voters in mixed-member proportional systems cope with winning and losing at the ballot box, highlighting that electoral losers place (part of) the blame for their electoral defeat on the electoral process and procedures as such. In addition, the findings point to the relevance of specific features of electoral systems in shaping winner-loser gaps in electoral-integrity beliefs.     

Forecasting the Presidential Vote in the States, 1948-2004

SUMMARY

This research updates, revises, and extends a forecasting equation of the presidential vote in the states. The original equation was composed of sixteen predictors available well before the election and estimated with data from 531 state elections from 1948 to 1988. The equation was empirically strong, based on objective predictors, and more parsimonious than previous equations. Reexamining the equation with 200 additional state elections from 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 indicates that the equation remains well supported, but suggests several opportunities for improvement. A revised equation has a mean absolute error of 3.2 percentage points and correctly predicts 87 percent of all electoral votes. The extension of the analysis adapts the forecast equation to predict electoral vote winners, conducting a logit analysis that takes into account both the size of the state and the closeness of its previous election. This produces more accurate forecasts of both electoral vote winners in the states and the division of the aggregate national electoral vote.     

How electoral vulnerability affects pension politics: Introducing a concept,measure and empirical application

Are electorally vulnerable politicians really less likely to support controversial legislation, such as pension reforms? While the literature on welfare state retrenchment has increasingly pointed to the role of electoral factors in the dynamics of social policy cutbacks, there are few studies that actually measure the magnitude of electoral pressure and its consequent impact on the politics of reform. To this end, the authors have developed a quantitative measure of the electoral vulnerability of politicians and tested its impact on pension reform outcomes using an original dataset comprising 16 Western European countries from 1980 to 2003. In line with expectations, the results show that the impact of electoral vulnerability on reform depends upon the system of interest intermediation. In corporatist systems, electoral vulnerability indeed impedes reform. But in pluralist systems, increased electoral vulnerability is associated with higher levels of reform. This is because unions in corporatist (but not in pluralist) systems can exploit electoral vulnerability in pre‐legislative bargaining, and thus pressure politicians. Consequently, this study has broader implications for the differential responsiveness of democracies to redistributive issues more generally.     

Economic inequality,winner-loser gap,and satisfaction with democracy

This study analyzes how economic inequality affects electoral winners and losers' satisfaction with democracy. We posit that both the poor and the rich have more at stake in elections when inequality is high. Electoral losers, whether they are the poor or the rich, are more likely to be dissatisfied with democratic systems when facing greater disparity in wealth. In contrast, electoral winners confronting higher inequality are more likely to express satisfaction with democracy. Employing a multilevel analysis of Comparative Study Electoral Systems (CSES) data, we find that the gap in satisfaction with democracy between electoral winners and losers widens as income inequality increases. Broadening the conventional wisdom that electoral systems mediate the effect of citizens' winner-loser status on their democratic attitudes, we demonstrate that the mediating effects of economic inequality are more critical than the institutional effects.     

To Participate or Not to Participate: The Link Between Survey Participation, Electoral Participation, and Political Interest

Survey participation, electoral participation, and politicalinterest have been given wide attention in the research literature,but no one so far has combined these three variables in onemodel. Taking the social isolation-hypothesis as our startingpoint, we developed a model with one factor, social involvement,as the common factor underlying these three types of participation.We reviewed the literature and concluded that we had to includea second underlying factor: attachment to society. Using a newdata set, gathered on the occasion of the 1998 Dutch nationalelections and including validated voter turnout measures, wewere able to test the model. After making some adaptions, wefound a model with a satisfactory fit. The results show that,by including social involvement and attachment to society asmediating variables, we can reach much higher levels of explainedvariances of survey and electoral participation than we canwith traditional models. The results also add to our understandingof the relationship between survey and electoral participationand political interest.     

Local Districts,National Contexts,and the Number of Parties

To date, electoral systems are conceptualised as setting an ‘upper bound’ to, or defining a ‘carrying capacity’ for, the number of parties or lists, and their effect is assessed at the district level. This article adds to the empirical study of electoral systems by analysing a vast database of district-level electoral returns. The argument focuses on the demand and supply of viable electoral candidates, which are conditioned by the interplay of strategic entry (by the party rank and file) and strategic voting (by the electorate). Drawing on a database of almost 18,000 electoral districts taken from 15 West European countries, the empirical analysis yields a number of insights: most specifically, (1) district magnitude only becomes binding and effective when a higher social demand meets a lower carrying capacity of the electoral district; (2) the provision of upper tiers undermines the emergence of Duvergerian equilibria within the primary electoral districts.