The 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly Election

The result of the assembly election in Northern Ireland in June 1998 was a victory for those who support the assembly, but it was not such a triumph for David Trimble and the Ulster Unionist Party. I will examine both the Unionist vote and the Nationalist vote and the consequences.     

How I came to write The Hut Six Story

Gordon Welchman was a Cambridge mathematician and one of the key figures working at Bletchley Park (BP) during World War Two. In 1974, he decided to write his own memoir following the publication of other books on the subject. His book ‘The Hut Six Story’ was published in both the US and UK in early 1982 and was the first to include technical details about the BP operation. Pressure on his publishers from the NSA and GCHQ ultimately resulted in the book being withdrawn from their lists. On 14 May 1982, he wrote this previously unpublished paper, explaining his motives.     

Election observer effects: A field experiment in the Russian Duma election of 2011

The literature on elections and election monitoring is divided between those who take a skeptical view, suggesting that monitors are often political rather than objective in their judgments, and those who see monitors as a real force for cleaner, more honest elections. Studies that use field experiments to look for the effect of monitors generally support the optimists, indicating that the mere presence of election observers can have powerful effects. This is surprising given the extent of the resources available to incumbents who wish to conduct electoral fraud. We present the results of an experiment in which 768 observers were randomly assigned to polling stations in 21 cities in Russia in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Unlike most previous studies of election observers, our results suggest that observer effects on turnout and vote for the ruling party are small. The results suggest the need to study more carefully the circumstances that shape the impact of observation missions.     

Election Laws,Mobilization, and Turnout: The Unanticipated Consequences of Election Reform

State governments have experimented with a variety of election laws to make voting more convenient and increase turnout. The impacts of these reforms vary in surprising ways, providing insight into the mechanisms by which states can encourage or reduce turnout. Our theory focuses on mobilization and distinguishes between the direct and indirect effects of election laws. We conduct both aggregate and individual‐level statistical analyses of voter turnout in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. The results show that Election Day registration has a consistently positive effect on turnout, whereas the most popular reform—early voting—is actually associated with lower turnout when it is implemented by itself. We propose that early voting has created negative unanticipated consequences by reducing the civic significance of elections for individuals and altering the incentives for political campaigns to invest in mobilization.     

Mission Accomplished: The Wartime Election of 2004

The war in Iraq, so the widely accepted view, hurt the reelection of George W. Bush. We contend, to the contrary, that the war helped him get reelected. First, we show that his victory fits the dominant pattern of wartime elections in American history. Second, we find that Bush’s approval ratings benefited from a complex rally where the Iraq war prolonged rather than diminished the 9/11 effect; most Americans affirmed rather than disputed a link between the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Third, while Bush’s approval proves sensitive to U.S. casualties in the Iraq war, any damage to his standing prior to the election was mitigated by sufficient popular support for that war. And finally, on Election Day, Bush was able to garner the vote of two critical blocks with favorable feelings about the Iraq war, be it the decision to invade or the prospect of success.

The American Presidential Election 2012: Anybody's Guess

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in November 2008 was an electric moment for the whole world, a shock in the course of history. The world's most powerful democracy had chosen a black man from a humble background, grandson of a Kenyan peasant who had risen to be a cook in the British Army. It was a truly amazing reaffirmation of the equal opportunity for all that is the stuff of the American dream. Shirley Williams examines the upcoming election and the players.