Decomposing the Vote: Individual,Communal, and Cantonal Sources of Voting Behavior in Switzerland

This article considers individual, communal, and cantonal sources of voting behavior in the 2007 National Council elections in Switzerland. Using hierarchical linear models, it is shown how the vote propensity for the five main parties (CVP, FDP, Greens, SP, and SVP) varies across individuals, communes, and cantons. Key explanatory factors at each of these levels are explored, as well as cross‐party differences in the effects of these factors.     

Kirchheimer Revisited: Party Polarisation,Party Convergence,or Party Decline in the German Party System

The 2005 German parliamentary elections produced two parties claiming victory, the inability to form a government, and Germany's second post-war grand coalition government. This article explores the peculiarities in the contemporary dynamic of the German party system. It considers the strategy and motivation of parties and the effect of party competition. A key focus is to revisit and evaluate the predictive power of Otto Kirchheimer's ‘end of ideology’ proposition in the German case. On the one hand, mainstream parties seem to be converging at the ideological centre across Western Europe. At the same time, some party polarisation within the party system is evident as more marginal parties such as those of the far left and far right have gained votes at the expense of the mainstream parties in recent elections. A third possibility is that both of these circumstances have produced a political void with voters becoming increasingly apathetic and non-ideological. This paper argues that in the aggregate, trends do not reflect the predictions of Kirchheimer.     

Is Consensual Politicizing Being Punished in Switzerland?

Over the last decade, Switzerland has been characterized by both a radicalization of its political system and the relative success of the SP and SVP parties, which tend to adopt a strategy of permanent campaigning. Because of this, it is often argued that politicians are held accountable for their behaviour and that their electoral successes depend on their voting behaviour in parliament. We thus explore whether the voting behaviour of representatives, or citizens' evaluations of parties' ideological positions had an impact on their electoral success in the 1995, 1999, and 2003 national elections. More precisely, we assess how far the proximity and directional models explain the electoral success of incumbents and parties using roll call data for the National Council as well as the Selects surveys at the individual level. The results at both levels suggest that voters' choice is largely consistent with what is predicted by the spatial models of electoral behaviour. Swiss voters form their party preference on both proximity and direction, which supports a mixed model of electoral behaviour.     

Party competition in the Middle East: spatial competition in the post-Arab Spring era

This paper charts the nature of political cleavage between major parties in post-Arab Spring elections in five Mediterranean region countries, with data from online opt-in surveys. We compare the Moroccan elections, held under a consolidated authoritarian regime, with the transitional cases of Tunisia and Egypt as well as the more mature democracies of Turkey and Israel. Voter opinions are obtained on 30 salient issues, and parties and voters are aligned along two dimensions. We trace country-specific cleavage patterns and reflections of party system maturity in these five countries. The cases of Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco reveal that in less settled cleavage structures there is little congruence between vote propensities for parties and agreement levels with policy positions compared to the more institutionalized democracies of Israel and Turkey where voters exhibit a higher likelihood to vote for a party as the distance between the voter and the party in the policy space gets smaller.     

Singapore’s 2015 General Election: Explaining PAP’s Resounding Win

Abstract

While Singapore’s 15th general election came about as expected, the ensuing results did not. In view of the opposition’s performance in the 2011 general election and the general sense that the ruling party had done well despite its performance being anything but sterling, the results were somewhat shocking. Even the leaders of the ruling party were caught by surprise at the party’s ability to garner 70% of the valid votes, 10% more than in the previous election. While many factors played a role, it was the opposition parties that lost the election rather than the ruling party that won it. Most of the opposition parties were rejected by the voters on grounds of not being worthy of support. The leading opposition party, the Workers’ Party, also suffered as many voters feared that it might perform too well to the detriment of the ruling party. In the end, the 2015 general elections strengthened the one-party-dominant state in Singapore and the quest for greater political representation was placed on the back burner.     

The Mexican Presidential and Congressional Elections of 2000 and Democratic Transition

The article examines the presidential and congressional elections of July 2000 in Mexico. The elections brought to an end more than 70 years of single party government and the culmination of a gradual democratisation process stretching back at least a decade. The long term decline in the bases of support for the regime and the changing institutional rules for elections and parties are described by way of contextualising the campaign itself and its leading protagonists. While the new rules of the game guaranteed free and fair elections, issues of internal party democracy and negative, personality-based campaigning do not paint a universally rosy democratic picture. Analysis of the election results demonstrates how the opposition was able to move beyond its traditional geographic confines and challenge across the country. However, voters did not give an unambiguous victory to Vicente Fox; his alliance does not possess a majority in either house of congress. Divided government and developments in the party system are considered as two key issues that will shape Mexico's democratic future.     

Understanding Political Knowledge and its Influence on Voting Preferences in the 2007 Federal Election

In this article we propose a model to explain how voters’ perceptions of their ideological proximity to a party affect their propensity to vote for that party. We argue that political knowledge plays a crucial moderating role in the relationship between party proximity and voting propensity. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between institutional knowledge (information about the political system) and party knowledge (information about the parties’ left–right positions). An analysis of survey data from the 2007 Swiss federal elections supports our main hypothesis that party knowledge enhances the link between party proximity and voting propensity. Institutional knowledge may have additional influence, but clear evidence for this effect was obtained only for propensities to vote for the Swiss People's Party (SVP). Overall, the impact of political knowledge was found to be substantial, even after controlling for the outstanding influence of party identification and other predictors of voting propensities.     

Multi-level voting and party competition in vertically simultaneous elections: the case of Ukraine

Vertically simultaneous elections to state-wide and regional legislatures provide us with a naturally occurring experiment in which to examine regionalism and multi-level voting. We examine the 2006 vertically and horizontally simultaneous state-wide and regional elections in Ukraine to determine how the internal dynamics of regionalism within a state account for the dissimilarity of voting behavior across electoral levels. Drawing on the party competition literature, we demonstrate that variations in both supply (parties) and demand (voters) produce considerable dissimilarity between regional and state results, with lower levels of consolidation and greater fractionalization at the regional level. We show that political cleavages operate differently across levels, that regional distinctiveness rather than regional authority better predicts first order-ness in regional elections, and that voters display varying tolerance for polarization at the regional and state level.     

Communicating with their voters: The use of direct mailing by the SPD and the CDU

One of the key functions of political parties in modern democracies consists of mobilising the voters and thereby integrating them into the political system. Opinion formation and interest representation by political parties are central to linking people and government. This article concentrates on the way in which political parties perform these tasks. Presenting the main findings of an empirical study into the use of direct mailing by the two major parties in Germany, the SPD and the CDU, the paper discusses its effectiveness as a new means of communication between political parties and their voters. More specifically, it shows how direct mailing is put to use and to what extent its themes reflect the themes of relevant election programmes. The paper concludes that direct mailing has been more widely used only since the change in legislation on party finance but has the potential of developing into an important means of communicating party policies to members and potential supporters.     

Past the saturation point: Why voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice-versa

When do voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice-versa? To understand these switches, we focus on the saturation of the party system. We theorize that when a party system is oversaturated – i.e. when a higher effective number of parties contests elections than predicted based on socio-political contextual characteristics (the system's ‘carrying capacity’) – it becomes increasingly likely that: (1) mainstream party voters defect to niche parties; and (2) niche party voters refrain from switching to mainstream parties. Based on vote-switching patterns in 15 countries and 53 elections, we find that oversaturation increases shifts from mainstream to niche parties. Further analyses show that this holds for shifts from mainstream to radical left and right parties, but not for shifts to green parties. This has important consequences for research on vote switching, the electoral consequences of policy differentiation and the competition between niche and mainstream parties.     

Dominant Party Adaptation to the Catch-All Model: a Comparison of Former Dominant Parties in Japan and South Korea

In the process of democratisation, it is expected that a former dominant party, at least one which abides by the rules of electoral contestation, will transition into a “catch-all” party. A catch-all party aims to attract the votes of all social cleavages and classes of voters outside what would be considered their traditional voter base. As part of the wider debate about democratisation in East Asia, this paper examines how two of East Asia’s liberal democracies—Japan and South Korea, the LDP and GNP/Saenuri, respectively, have adapted to electoral defeat and in what ways they have transitioned into catch-all parties in the Kircheimer mould. This paper finds that while intra-party reforms which could fit a catch-all model have yet to be institutionalised, data from the Comparative Manifesto Database shows that there has been a significant change in which policies both parties promote and that these are designed to appeal to a broad base of voters.     

German Voters in Times of Crisis: The Impact of Perceptions and Economic Context on Electoral Behaviour

This paper analyses the connection between economic context, voters’ individual assessment of the economy, and party identification, taking the German national elections of 2009 as an example. Based on the results of multinomial and multilevel regression models, the article shows that partisanship moderates how the economy affects the vote. In cases of increasing unemployment in the constituency, voters are less likely to vote for the Social Democrats instead of the CDU and the opposition. This effect is particularly strong amongst voters who report that they identify with the Social Democrats. Regarding the effect of voters’ assessment of the national economy, the results are different. In this case, a better evaluation of the regional economy increases the probability to vote for right-wing parties – notably amongst voters without partisanship. These findings suggest that the moderating effect of partisanship on the economy’s impact on voting behaviour should not be overestimated. What is more, this analysis implies that research on economic voting should always account for both contextual factors and voters’ personal assessment of the economy, as these measures reveal different dimensions of economic voting.     

从2018年地方选举看俄罗斯左翼政党发展态势

俄罗斯地方选举的结果往往能够反映出俄罗斯的政治社会形势、中央地方关系的变化情况以及精英的流动和发展状况,对国家杜马选举甚至俄罗斯总统选举都有一定的影响。2018年俄地方选举呈现出不同以往的特点,普京支持的“统一俄罗斯”党不仅失去多个地区的领导权,在地区立法机构的席位也大幅缩水。相比之下,俄罗斯联邦共产党则取得了不错的竞选成绩,在所有参选地区的得票率都有所提升,大幅提高了在地区立法机构中的席位占比。但是由于政治当局的打压、左翼政党内部的分裂和俄罗斯联邦共产党自身的发展局限,俄罗斯左翼政党在短期内依然无法与强大的政权党抗衡。不断进行理论创新、加强党的自身建设、联合其他左翼政党和爱国力量,才是俄罗斯左翼政党复兴的长远之计。     

Party opportunism among local politicians after Taiwan’s power transition

This paper probes into a hypothesised opportunism towards political party affiliation among local politicians in Taiwan since the power transition from Kuomintang (KMT) to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) rule began in 2000. Longitudinal changes in election candidates' party affiliation are analysed to see what happened to the KMT's supposedly strong base of local politicians after the change of governing party. The research finds a generally high propensity of election candidates' changing or dropping their party affiliation between elections, and an increased propensity among KMT candidates after 2000. However, defections to other parties are more common in higher elections. In grassroots elections, many candidates flow in and out of their party affiliation depending on the political circumstances, but they rarely change party. Several years after the DPP gained power in presidential elections, the new ruling party is still struggling to build a strong local party organisation.     

Agribusiness,Legislative Elections and Party Fragmentation in Brazil

The article explores the impact of agribusiness on the politics of legislative elections in Brazil. The central argument is that social contexts dominated by agribusiness tend to amplify the number of right-wing micro-parties, due firstly to the economic interests prevalent in such regions and secondly given the ‘catch all’ nature of Brazil's traditional right and centre-right political parties. By showing how agribusiness favours the proliferation of small parties, we may also reveal one of the main reasons behind the ‘hyperfragmentation’ of Brazil's party system.     

Small parties in the new bundesländer: Bündnis 90/die grünen in brandenburg

This article considers party system development in the eastern Länder looking at the fate of the small parties that have seen their aggregate share of the vote dwindle at successive state elections to the extent that the eastern states display a three‐party system comprising the CDU, the SPD and the PDS. Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and the FDP are notable casualties, since they are now extra‐parliamentary parties, having previously enjoyed the status of coalition partners. Bundnis 90/Die Grünen in the Land of Brandenburg is singled out for detailed analysis as a representative of this fate. Paradoxically, the fact that Biindnis 90 had been successful in the 1990 Landtag elections contributed to its downfall in 1994. This position of power meant that there was no incentive for key members to meet compromises and merge with the Greens. The resulting split in the party following an exceedingly acrimonious merger process did not help the party's chances at the next Landtag elections.     

The evolution of party images and party system in Taiwan, 1992–2004

This article examines the evolution of party images in Taiwan between 1992 and 2004. It shows that party images are not immutable, as while the DPP gained more positive images, the other parties gained more negative images during the research period. The results show that the Taiwanese parties have quite distinct party images. Taiwanese voters often tend to use ethnic background and the cross-Strait relations to define the parties. Party images also play a significant role in Taiwanese voting behaviour, even when other variables are controlled. Voters tend to vote for the parties that they have favourable impressions of. The results also have implications for how political parties package themselves to attract more votes and on the development of the party system in Taiwan.     

Contrasting First- and Second-Order Electoral Behaviour: Determinants of Individual Party Choice in European and German Federal Elections

In contrast to national elections, both parties and voters are assumed to think that ‘less is at stake’ in European elections: Campaigns are less intense, turnout is lower, and citizens are more inclined to ‘vote with their hearts’. The latter should be reflected in differing rationales of voting – party choice should not be based on identical determinants in national and European elections. However, this hypothesis has not been sufficiently tested and most of the research is based on the analysis of aggregated data while causal explanations are located on the micro level. This paper compares vote functions of individuals in regard to the 2009 European Parliament election as well as the 2009 German Federal election. Using data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), comparison of explanatory models shows that party choice on both levels is neither fundamentally different nor does it fit into the pattern of second-order electoral behaviour.     

Does the Electoral System Foster a Predominant Party System? Evidence from Turkey

This paper discusses the role of the electoral system in making the Justice and Development Party (AKP) dominant. Drawing on Sartori’s framework, we first clarify the concept of a predominant party system. Second, we examine the impact of the electoral system on the emergence of a predominant party system in Turkey. Analysing election results, we argue that the electoral system fosters dominance in three ways. First, a combination of electoral formula, national threshold and district threshold leads to over‐representation of large parties and under‐representation of small ones. Second, the fear of a wasted vote due to the high threshold prompts voters to support their second‐best option, which concentrates the votes among large parties. Finally, the electoral system increases electoral turnout rates by extending polarization.