Minor parties and strategic voting in recent U.S. presidential elections

I measure and explain strategic voting in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 U.S. presidential elections. Aggregate polling and election data from the 50 states and District of Columbia indicate whether a minor party candidate's support rose or fell between the final poll and Election Day. A negative vote-poll gap is evidence of classic strategic voting while a positive vote-poll gap is evidence of expressive strategic voting. Expressive voting was widespread in 1992 and 1996, but instrumental voting was dominant in 2000. In 2000 Ralph Nader lost support in most states, particularly those where the major party contest was competitive. In contrast, Ross Perot gained in most states due to expressive strategic voting facilitated by the noncompetitive national race. I also show that the vote-poll gap is a product of changes in voter turnout and, to a lesser extent, elite mobilization.     

Trading party preferences: the Australian experience of preferential voting

Political parties respond to electoral rules in ways which gain them partisan advantage and enable them to make strategic choices about the use of their electoral support. The alternative vote (AV) and proportional representation by the single transferable vote (STV) provide considerable opportunity for this kind of partisan activity. The ability of the voter under such electoral systems to rank candidates in order of the voter's preference creates a kind of property which can be used by parties, especially minor parties, to influence the behaviour of both candidates and other parties. The paper investigates this aspect of preferential voting systems and the extent to which the context of electoral rules can encourage or discourage a trade in partisan preferences. Elections for the Australian House of Representatives and Senate are used to show how political actors can respond to electoral rules which permit the control and trading of preferences to be developed into a series of sophisticated transactions.     

Policy Voting in Senate Elections: The Case of Abortion

Questions about whether voters rely on their policy preferences when casting ballots have been present since scholars first began examining the determinants of voting behavior. This paper seeks to contribute to research in this area by analyzing abortion policy voting in Senate elections. Specifically, I investigate how the effects of national party position divergence, candidate position divergence, and voter information and salience moderate the relationship between abortion policy preferences and vote choice. The results suggest that the national parties' divergence on abortion does not directly strengthen the connection between abortion policy preferences and ballot decisions. Instead, candidate contrast appears to be the key. And, well informed and motivated voters are especially responsive. Taken together, the findings illuminate the nature of abortion policy voting and also inform the burgeoning scholarship on campaign effects, the role of information, and issue publics in American politics.     

The Calculus of Voting in Compulsory Voting Systems

Compulsory voting laws have consistently been demonstrated to boost electoral participation. Despite the widespread presence of compulsory voting and the significant impact these laws appear to have on voting behavior, surprisingly little effort has been devoted to analyzing how mandatory voting alters the decision-making calculus of individual voters in these systems. Moreover, studies that investigate the influence of compulsory voting laws on electoral participation generally treat these policies monolithically, with scant attention to the nuances that differentiate mandatory voting laws across systems and to their consequences for voting rates. Analyses that explicitly and empirically examine the effects of penalties and enforcement are surprisingly rare. This study aims to fill that void by adapting rational choice models of participation in elections for compulsory voting systems. I find that the level of penalties countries impose for non-compliance and the degree of penalty enforcement impact turnout rates. Voters in mandatory voting systems abstain least when both the penalties and the likelihood of enforcement are high, and abstain most when both meaningless.

The inconsequence of negative statehouse evaluations on ballot measures: Evidence from survey experiments

Existing scholarship about ballot measure voting and elite cuegivers suggests that the express endorsement of an unpopular legislature on a statewide ballot measure will depress voter support. Despite seven tests across two decades on both high- and low-profile measures, it did not. This null finding is in keeping with macro-level patterns of strong public support for the more than 4000 legislative referrals approved by voters in the past century. Consequently, we propose that the influence of an elite endorsement on voter behavior is more complicated than past research suggests. Specifically, in keeping with the seminal observation made by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (1995) that American political cynicism is more a matter of distaste for certain political practices than for actual political institutions, we suspect that when voters are overwhelmed by policy proposals that are both unfamiliar and complex, they may find assurance in the imprimatur of their General Assembly.     

The September 2013 Regional Elections in Russia: The Worst of Both Worlds

The September 2013 elections in the regions of Russia resulted in victories of the major pro-government party, United Russia, in 16 regional legislative elections, and brought success to incumbent chief executives in eight gubernatorial elections. However, the apparent recovery of United Russia from the trauma of the 2011 national legislative elections stemmed not so much from its increased popularity in the electorate, but rather from its ability to engage in manipulative vote-splitting strategies against the opposition. The rules of candidate nomination in gubernatorial elections were so restrictive that most of these elections could not be characterized as truly competitive.     

The Regulation of Third Party Campaigning in UK Elections

This article looks at the regulation of third parties in UK election law. During the 2019 general election campaign, media reports noted an increase in non-party organisations spending money on electoral advertisements on social media. Such advertisements raised a number of ethical questions, related to spending, transparency, and the content of the messages. Despite such recent concerns, third party electoral activity in the UK is not new, and the existing legal framework regulates campaign spending. That framework has its roots in Victorian-era election law and has been periodically updated. This article will look at the challenges in designing laws to regulate third party electoral activity, as a difficult line has to be drawn to ensure the laws are effective, while at the same time not imposing too many burdens on independent political activity. Moreover, the move to digital campaigning poses some further challenges, such as monitoring compliance by third party campaigners. While there are no simple solutions to some of the issues raised by third party electoral activity, this article will note some of the measures that could at least improve the transparency of such campaigning.     

When the chickens come home to roost: The long-term impact of party positions on religious voting

Despite the widespread secularisation of West European societies, research has only found mixed evidence of a decline in the influence of religion on people's electoral preferences. A relatively recent line of inquiry has adopted a ‘top-down’ approach to this problem, arguing that the impact of religion not only depends on structural social changes, but also on parties’ convergence on moral issues. Drawing upon this ‘top-down’ approach and the ‘impressionable years’ model, this article argues that parties’ political strategies aimed at (de-)mobilising social cleavages have a lasting effect on voters’ party preferences. Using nine rounds of the European Social Survey for 19 West European countries, I find the impact of religiosity on voting for the centre-right (Conservative and Christian Democratic parties) to be significantly smaller for voters who were exposed during emerging adulthood (aged 15–25) to a centre-right party that adopted similar positions on moral issues to those of its main competitors. These findings have important implications because they highlight the role of generational replacement in bringing about electoral change, even when this is prompted by parties’ strategic choices.     

The Effect of Personal Idealism,Relativism, and Machiavellianism on Voting Tendency: A Turkish Study

This study examined the relationship between Turkish voters’ ethical characteristics and voting tendencies to the political left, right, or center by applying the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) and Mach IV to the collection of data for analysis from 500 voters in a national election in Turkey. The most significant finding is that there was no statistically meaningful relationship among levels of idealism, relativism, or Machiavellianism and voting tendencies to the political left, right, and center. However, results generated by EPQ and Mach IV questionnaire found that voting tendencies were affected by personal relativism (0.10), followed by Machiavellianism (?0.03) and idealism (?0.03). Results show that respondents’ voting tendency was most affected by the level of their personal relativism, but the magnitude of the effect was not statistically significant. The mean scores for Machiavellianism and relativism attributes were on average in the mid-range of the scale, while mean scores for idealism show that the participating voters agreed most strongly with the statements relating to the idealism and could be characterized as absolutist by their low relativism and high idealism. The results demonstrate a positive linear relationship, linking both idealism and relativism to Machiavellianism and indicate statistically significant positive correlations among the three variables.     

The second-order election model revisited: An experimental test of vote choices in European Parliament elections

This paper examines the micro-foundations of the second-order elections model of European Parliament (EP) elections. We extend the existing literature in several ways. First, we propose an individual-level model of voting behaviour in second-order elections. Second, we present the first study using experimental methods to test the predictions of the second-order model, allowing us to test the individual-level propositions about vote choice in a controlled environment. Importantly, we also examine the conditioning effect of information on the ‘second-order’ nature of voting behaviour in EP elections. Our findings show that while voters base their EP vote choices primarily on domestic preferences, those who are given additional information about the European integration dimension are also more likely to vote on this basis.     

The Success of the Regionalist Parties in the 2014 Elections in Belgium

In May 2014, and for the second time in her political history, regional, federal and European elections were organized simultaneously in Belgium. In the direct follow-up of the sixth state reform, which increased the powers and autonomy of the Belgian Regions and Communities, these elections were crucial for the future of the country and for the multi-level coalition formation at the regional and federal levels. The political campaign was dominated by socioeconomic issues and demands for further autonomy, particularly in the Flemish region. Regional electoral results confirmed the success of the regionalist parties in Flanders, but also in Brussels and in the German-speaking Community. These successes allowed regionalist parties to enter all regional and federal governments—often as the dominant party—with the exception of the Walloon and the French-speaking Community cabinets.     

The rise of the opposition party in Taiwan: explaining Chen Shui-bian’s victory in the 2000 Presidential election

The 2000 Taiwan presidential election drastically changed Taiwan’s political landscape. For the first time in Taiwan, an opposition party candidate, Chen Shui-bian, won the presidential race, receiving 39.3% of the popular vote. To understand the factors that determined the election’s outcome, we analyze survey data from the 2000 presidential election. First, we study whether a divided ruling party was the cause of the opposition party candidate’s victory. That is, would the ruling party have lost if one of the trailing candidates had opted not to run? Second, there were charges following the election that the Kuomintang misled people into believing their candidate was still leading in the polls, when he was really running third, and this misinformation led people to vote differently than they would have otherwise, possibly giving the election to the opposition party candidate. We examine the validity of this claim by measuring the degree to which strategic voting could have influenced the outcome. Third, to understand the underlying dimensions of the electoral competition in Taiwan and to understand each candidate’s electoral support, we run a multivariate statistical model to study how strategic voting, candidate personalities, party identification, and issues influenced respondents’ vote choices. Finally, we discuss the effects of election polling data on election outcomes.     

The impact of motivational and contextual factors on turnout in first- and second-order elections

Based on voter survey from European election study 2009, we examine the impact of one individual-level motivational factor, i.e. interest in politics, and its interactions with institutional and contextual factors such as compulsory voting, electoral competition and the number of parties on participation in 2009 EP elections and previous national elections. The results show that political interest is more closely connected to turnout in second-order elections which are usually considered less salient. Correspondingly, also the contingent effect of compulsory voting and competition is more evident in EP elections. While compulsory voting substantially decreases the turnout gap between the most and least politically attentive voters in both types of elections, the moderating effect of competitiveness is found only in EP elections.     

The Rise of the Far Right in Debtor and Creditor European Countries: The Case of European Parliament Elections

While the 2014 European Parliament elections were marked by the rise of parties on the far right‐wing, the different patterns of support that we observe across Europe and across time are not directly related to the economic crisis. Indeed, economic hardship seems neither sufficient nor necessary for the rise of such parties to occur. Using the cross‐national results for the 2004, 2009 and 2014 EP elections in order to capture time and country variations, we posit that the economy affects the rise of far right‐wing parties in more complex ways. Specifically, we compare the experience of high‐debt countries (the ‘debtors’) and the others (the ‘creditors’) and explore the relationship between far right‐wing party success on the one hand, and unemployment, inequality, immigration, globalisation and the welfare state on the other. Our discussion suggests there might be a trade‐off between budgetary stability and far right‐wing party support, but the choice between Charybdis and Scylla may be avoided if policy‐makers carefully choose which policies should bear the brunt of the fiscal adjustment.     

Voting when the economy goes bad,everyone is in charge,and no one is to blame: The case of the 2009 German election

The economy was a major issue in Germany’s 2009 election. The global economic crisis did not spare Germany, whose economy is tightly integrated into the global economy. So when the German economy experienced a historical shock, did voters connect their views of the economy with their vote choice? Or did they, as some research has suggested, recognize Germany’s dependence on global markets and cut the government slack, especially when the government consists of the country’s two major parties? Using pre- and post-election panel surveys from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we investigate the weight that voters gave to the economy, relative to other considerations, when casting their ballot and whether governing parties were disproportionately judged based on the state of the economy.     

The Impact of Procedural Information Costs on Voting: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Chile

This paper uses a natural experiment to identify the effect of a procedural information cost on the electoral registration of young first-time voters. We exploit the fact that information about when the minimum age eligibility requirement is due, either at registration or election-day, is only meaningful for those turning 18 after registration closing day. Using a national dataset on Chilean registration over four elections, we provide evidence of a sharp discontinuity in the registration rate of those youngsters turning 18 at closing date. The effect is both sizable and robust, persists over time, and is similar across income groups.     

Concurrent Elections and Voter Turnout: The Effect of the De-linking of State Elections on Electoral Participation in India's Parliamentary Polls, 1971–2004

This article examines the effect that the decoupling of state and national elections has had on voter turnout in India's national parliamentary polls since 1971. According to conventional wisdom in the comparative literature on electoral turnout, separate elections to multiple levels and/or branches of government should depress turnout relative to co-temporal polls, ceteris paribus . The evidence from Indian elections provides strong confirmation for this hypothesis. This suggests that political decentralization through separate national and local elections may actually weaken citizens' incentives to participate in the democratic electoral process.     

The impact of candidate selection rules and electoral vulnerability on legislative behaviour in comparative perspective

Legislators are political actors whose main goal is to get re-elected. They use their legislative repertoire to help them cater to the interests of their principals. It is argued in this article that we need to move beyond treating electoral systems as monolithic entities, as if all legislators operating under the same set of macro-rules shared the same set of incentives. Rather, we need to account for within-system variation – namely, candidate selection rules and individual electoral vulnerability. Using a most different systems design, Germany, Ireland and Portugal are leveraged with both cross-system and within-system variation. An original dataset of 345,000 parliamentary questions is used. Findings show that candidate selection rules blur canonical electoral system boundaries. Electoral vulnerability has a similar effect in closed-list and mixed systems, but not in preferential voting settings.     

The Impact of Television in Bulgaria on the Electoral Process and Voting Behavior

After 45 years of communism, Bulgaria held its first democratic elections in May 1990, following an interparty coup that had ended the totalitarian rule in November 1989. A new Bulgarian Constitution was adopted in 1991. During the following years of transition to democracy, a normal political environment was gradually established. Among the major achievements during this period were that the country joined NATO in spring 2004 and entered the European Union in January 2007. During this period of transition to a democratic political system and marketplace economy, the processes of decentralization, liberalization, and privatization led to a completely new media landscape with strong social impact. The past two decades have witnessed five presidential (1992, 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2011), seven parliamentary (1990, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2001, 2005, and 2009), six local (1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2007, and 2011), and two European parliamentary elections (2007 and 2009) and the appointment of twelve governments in Bulgaria. The main objective of the proposed paper is to present the impact of media and, in particular, of television on the democratization developments in the country.     

(Re‐)join the party! The effects of direct democracy on party membership in Europe

It has been argued that political parties are in decline. While they used to be responsible for connecting citizens to the state by translating their preferences into policies, they have increasingly become part of the state, acting as governors instead. While this perspective emphasises parties’ representative function, it is less clear what their role is in a more direct democratic context. Parties may gain support due to such context, but they may also be seen increasingly redundant in a situation where citizens can co‐decide directly. Focusing on party membership, this study tests these rival expectations on a panel of 16 West European democracies over the period 1980–2008 and finds that parties tend to have higher levels of party membership in a direct democratic context. The usage of referendums, however, does not contribute to this effect.