Place of residence and registration: problems and comparability in the classification of births

In 1973, the classification method for births in Mexico was changed from place of registration to place of mother's residence. "The objective of this work is to analyze how the place of 'customary residence of the mother' has been registered and to determine if the change of classification has some effect [on] the comparability of the information about births in different states. The information analyzed is divided into two periods, according to the way in which it was obtained and processed and the institution responsible for its publication." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

The impact of closeness on electoral participation exploiting the Italian double ballot system

We investigate whether the degree of political competition affects electoral turnout by using Italian municipal election data from 1993 to 2011. Relying on elections held using a double ballot system, we apply an instrumental variable technique exploiting the actual closeness between the two leading candidates in the first round as an instrument for closeness in the second round. The use of this strategy to estimate the impact of closeness on turnout is new to the literature. Controlling for municipal fixed effects and candidates’ characteristics, we find that expected closeness significantly increases turnout, thus supporting the idea that the expected benefits of voting increase in tighter political races. The estimated effect is much larger than that found when measuring closeness with ex-post electoral results, suggesting quite a relevant endogeneity bias in previous studies.     

A look into the mirror: Preferences,representation and electoral participation

Voting Advice Applications (VAA) are often praised as tools helping users to find their best matching candidates or parties. Using such tools, so the claim goes, might trigger a positive impact on electoral participation. We show that the relationship between VAA usage and the intention to take part in elections indeed exists. The mechanism through which users are drawn to the polls or, inversely, detracted from taking part in the elections is, however, primarily working through the extent with which users' preferences overlap with those of the political parties running in the campaign. The further users find themselves away – in terms of this overlap – from the political parties, the higher the probability of a VAA deterring this user from participating.     

The effect of congruence in policy priorities on electoral participation

This paper proposes that voters are more likely to turn out at elections if candidates and parties address their issue concerns in the election campaign. Voters with high levels of congruence in policy priorities should perceive the campaign as more interesting and the election as more relevant. In addition, the costs associated with the vote choice should be lower if voters' policy priorities are salient. The effect should be weakened by party identification, which acts both as a mobilising force and as a heuristic to the vote choice, making information costs less detrimental to turnout. The analysis, which links voter survey data with candidate survey and media content data from the 2009 German federal election, confirms the hypotheses.     

Economic adversity and electoral participation of vulnerable socioeconomic groups

Do economic hardships affect electoral participation? Using cross-sectional data for 44 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America between 1996 and 2013, we find that individual-level attributes and structural factors shape voters’ reaction to economic adversity. This paper presents empirical evidence showing that economic downturns affect electoral participation. However, macroeconomic fluctuations have heterogeneous effects. While poorer and less educated citizens are more likely to increase their level of turnout during periods of economic adversity, the rate of participation of individuals with a higher socioeconomic status is not affected by economic downturns. Moreover, we demonstrate that the negative impact of economic hardships on the likelihood of electoral participation of the most vulnerable socioeconomic groups is mostly found in countries that are less inserted into the global economy and in states that offer weaker welfare protections.     

Party registration and party self-identification: Exploring the role of electoral institutions in attitudes and behaviors

How do electoral institutions affect self-identified partisanship? I hypothesize that party registration acts to anchor a person's party identification, tying a person to a political party even when their underlying preferences may align them with the other party. Estimating a random effects multinomial logit model, I find individuals registered with a party are more likely to self-identify with that party and away from the other party. Party registration also affects voting in presidential elections but not in House elections, leading to greater defection in the former where voters have more information about the candidates. These insights illuminate varying rates of electoral realignment, particularly among southern states, and the makeup of primary electorates in states with and without party registration.     

The estimated cost impact of privatizing student transportation in Minnesota school districts

Student transportation makes up a substantial portion of a typical school district??s operating budget, and sub-contracting bus service to private firms has been advanced by some as a way to reduce transportation costs. Previous studies have found conflicting evidence regarding the cost impact of privatization. This paper seeks to improve on previous studies by estimating cost equations using data that spans six school-years. The primary result is that privatization acts to substantially increase transportation costs. Estimates using a pooled cross section predicted that going from fully outsourced to fully in house reduced costs by approximately 15.8%, while the analogous estimate using a first-differenced equation was a savings of 20.7%.     

The impact of electoral formulae on the creation of majority governments

This paper examines the electoral record of western democracies in terms of the incidence of one-party majority government. The record of 510 cases indicates that two features of the electoral sytem—the formula and district magnitude—contribute significantly to the creation of such governments. Regression analysis allows us to estimate precisely this impact and clearly distinguish among the political consequences of majority, plurality and PR systems.     

Assessing the psychological and mechanical impact of electoral rules: A quasi-experiment

The paper assesses the influence of electoral rules on vote choice and election outcomes using a quasi-experiment conducted during a recent Canadian provincial election. Respondents were invited to vote under three voting systems (first past the post, alternative voting and proportional representation) and to answer a short questionnaire. We examine how the distribution of votes and seats is affected, and we ascertain how much of the total difference is due to psychological and mechanical effects. We find that a PR system would have increased legislative fractionalization by the equivalent of one effective party and that the mechanical effect is much more important than the psychological effect. As for AV, its mechanical and psychological effects act in opposite directions.     

The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect

This paper applies a game-theoretic model of participation under uncertainty to investigate the negative relationship between constituency size and voter turnout rates: theconstituency size effect. We find that this theoretical model accounts for almost all of the variation in turnout due to size in cross sectional data from school budget referenda.     

One voter and two choices: The impact of electoral context on the 2011 UK referendum

There is a debate in the literature on referendum voting as to whether these occasions are opportunities for voters to express issue preferences in the absence of partisan politics or whether they simply serve as referendums on the current government. In part, this latter, second order account is assumed to be driven by the amount and content of media coverage, and hence information about the referendum, that is available to voters. In this paper, we address the second order question and demonstrate that holding elections concurrently both reduces the amount of media attention to the second order contest—the AV referendum in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland where national elections were held—and moderates media priming, thereby affecting the salient cues in the decision making of voters in those contexts.     

The electoral impact of the financial crisis: Evidence using district-level data

Do economic downturns increase voter support for left or right parties? In our empirical analysis, we combine fine-grained registry-data on the labor market impact of the crisis and how it varied across 5000 electoral districts, with district-level data on vote-shares for all major parties in Swedish parliamentary elections before and after the crisis. Because the impact was so diverse across districts, we can estimate the electoral impact of unemployment more efficiently than usual. Moreover, because the crisis was an external and unexpected shock to the Swedish economy, we argue that the selection bias that is usually inherent in estimating the electoral impact of unemployment is mitigated. We find that the electoral impact of crisis-induced unemployment was large, benefiting right parties.     

Gender,political participation and electoral systems: A cross‐national analysis

This article investigates whether the smaller gender gaps in political engagement, found in more proportional electoral systems, translate into smaller gender differences in political participation. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, it presents the argument that more proportional systems may send signals that multiple interests are included in the policy‐making process, which may increase women's levels of political participation and thereby reduce gender gaps. Additionally, the article tests for the possibility that a greater number of political parties and the elected representatives they provide act as barriers to political participation that have a greater impact on women's levels of participation than men's. It is argued that women's lower levels of political resources and engagement might create more difficult barriers for them than for men. Results lend little support for the first hypothesis, but a greater confirmation for the second.     

Re-examining the evidence on the electoral impact of terrorist attacks: The Spanish election of 2004

This paper re-examines the electoral effect of the 11-M terrorist attacks in Madrid. Previous research has focused on post-electoral surveys to construct counterfactuals for the evaluation of the electoral impact of the attack. Bali (Electoral Studies, 2007) claims that the terrorists attacks had an important electoral impact while Lago and Montero (2005) claim the opposite. In this paper I propose to re-examine the evidence using a methodological approach based on actual votes instead of opinions revealed by surveys, and the difference-in-differences estimator. The calculations under the counterfactual of “no terrorist attack” support the forecasts of the polls taken prior to the terrorist attack and the results of Bali (2007). The incumbent (conservative) party would have won the election with between 42% and the 45% of the votes, while the socialist party would have obtained 37% of the votes.     

Getting things straight: The effects of ballot design and electoral structure on voter participation

This paper considers the implications of the straight-party voting option (STVO) on participation in judicial elections. Voters using straight-party options (by definition) do not vote for candidates in nonpartisan elections. Consequently, ballot roll-off in these elections is more likely to occur when people are given the chance to vote the party ticket and complete the voting process quickly. This is the case because nonpartisan judicial elections are considerably less salient than statewide and federal partisan elections. This article separates out the effects of the institutional structure of the election on political participation with the effects of ballot design. We find that in nonpartisan elections, the straight-party option decreases voter participation since voters who utilize the straight-ticket option may erroneously believe that they have voted for these nonpartisan offices, or simply ignore them. However, in nonpartisan elections without straight-ticket voting, participation is increased compared to nonpartisan elections with straight-ticket voting. Additionally, both forms of nonpartisan elections have less participation than partisan elections, all of which have the straight-ticket option. Thus, voter participation is affected not only by the type of election, but the type of voting rules in the election.     

Issue ownership and salience shocks: The electoral impact of Australian bushfires

As climate change increases the frequency of natural disasters, understanding how such disasters affect voting behavior has become crucial. While the literature has demonstrated that voters punish the party of the incumbent when they experience severe destruction, it remains unclear how other political parties are affected. In particular, we argue that voters shift their support to Green parties following natural disasters, given that these parties have ownership of environmental issues. We further argue that disasters decrease mainstream leftist parties’ vote share because liberal-minded voters are more likely to be the ones switching to Green parties. Empirical tests on bushfires and voting in Australia provide some support for our predictions, as all the expected effects of fires on voting manifest in state-level tests but not constituency-level tests. This suggests that our theory may operate only at certain levels of governance, paving the way for future research into why this might be.