Securing the base: electoral competition under variable turnout

I evaluate the ??Securing the Base?? strategy, which prescribes that candidates position themselves away from the political center in order to maximize turnout among their supporters and reduce defections of their supporters to third party candidates. My results support the notion that voters abstain due to indifference and imply that candidate positioning has a large effect on voter turnout and third party voting. Nonetheless, my results indicate that the candidates can best compete by adopting centrist positions. While a candidate can increase turnout among his supporters by moving away from the center, many moderate voters will defect to his opponent.     

Campaign finance reform and electoral competition: Comment

Campaign finance regulation is an important issue for democracies. Proponents of stricter contribution limits believe it will improve competitiveness. Opponents argue that contribution caps are just a mask for incumbency protection. This paper comments on John Lott’s 2006 article in “Campaign Finance Reform and Electoral Competition” in Public Choice.     

Multiparty electoral competition in the Netherlands and Germany: A model based on multinomial probit

A typical assumption of electoral models of party competition is that parties adopt policy positions so as to maximize expected vote share. Here we use Euro-barometer survey data and European elite-study data from 1979 for the Netherlands and Germany to construct a stochastic model of voter response, based on multinomial probit estimation. For each of these countries, we estimate a pure spatial electoral voting model and a joint spatial model. The latter model also includes individual voter and demographic characteristics. The pure spatial models for the two countries quite accurately described the electoral response as a stochastic function of party positions. We use these models to perform a thought experiment so as to estimate the expected vote maximizing party positions. We go on to propose a model of internal party decision-making based both on pre-election electoral estimation and post-election coalition bargaining. This model suggests why the various parties in the period in question did not adopt vote maximizing positions. We argue that maximizing expected vote will not, in general, be a rational party strategy in multiparty political systems which are based on proportional representation.     

Competence and ambiguity in electoral competition

The level of competence that voters attribute to different candidates is an important determinant of election results. In addition, it is observed that some candidates tend to be more ambiguous in their campaigns regarding future plans, while others commit to specific policies. We offer a model where politicians who vary in their level of competence compete by making costly campaign declarations. We show that a separating equilibrium exists in which the ambiguity of a candidate’s campaign declaration reveals her level of competence. The model explains how politicians may use an “issue”-based campaign to create a competent image, and provides an additional explanation for different levels of campaign ambiguity.     

Campaign finance reform and electoral competition

Using state senate data from 1984 through the beginning of 2002, this paper finds that campaign donation regulations clearly reduce the competitiveness in political races. This is reflected in several dimensions. Conservative estimates indicate that different donation limits are associated with anywhere from a 4 to over a 23 percentage point increase in win margins. The regulations increase the probability that only one candidate will run for office. And they increase the probability that incumbents win re-election. Campaign finance regulations also tend to reduce the number of candidates who run for office by an average of about 20 percent.     

European parties' performance in electoral competition

Abstract: This article focuses on competition for votes between parties, as it existed in Western Europe in the period of the direct election to the European Parliament in 1989. Following earlier research by Van der Eijk and Niemöller, an instrument is introduced to measure the probability of party choice of EC citizens which establishes the likelihood of respondents to vote for any of the nationally relevant options/parties. A number of substantive conclusions about political parties'competitive performance result from this research. First, a single mechanism seems to structure electoral competition in all EC member-countries. Second, the competitive performance of political parties is not affected by their governmental status, their ideological position, and the degree of politicisation of the electoral environment. And third, parties'competitive performance is strongly affected by the degree of uniqueness of their electoral potential, their mobilising capacities, their ideological extremity and their sheer size.     

A computational electoral competition model with social clustering and endogenous interest groups as information brokers

We extend the basic model of spatial competition in two directions. First, political parties and voters do not have complete information but behave adaptively. Political parties use polls to search for policy platforms that maximize the probability of winning an election and the voting decision of voters is influenced by social interaction. Second, we allow for the emergence of interest groups. These interest groups transmit information about voter preferences to the political parties, and they coordinate voting behavior. We use simulation methods to investigate the convergence properties of this model. We find that the introduction of social dynamics and interest groups increases the separation between parties platforms, prohibits convergence to the center of the distribution of voter preferences, and increases the size of the winning set.     

Issue clarity in electoral competition. Insights from Austria

This paper analyses parties' policy supply in electoral campaigns. In so doing, it proposes to look at issue clarity which is defined as the share of objectively testable pledges within an election manifesto. The main argument states that parties not only decide their positions and issue saliencies, but also the level of specificity with which they present their policies. The data come from Austria (1990–2008) and, thus, provide a good example for a Western European multi-party system with proportional representation. The analyses show that extreme parties present manifestos with higher issue clarity compared to moderate parties. Furthermore, this result is strengthened by a party's role in government. Issue ownership, however, seems to have no effect on issue clarity.     

Party strategies and electoral competition in post-Communist countries: Evidence from Poland

Poland's major post-Communist party, the SLD, was an electorally successful legacy party during the 1990's. An analysis of Polish National Election Studies data and data from a separate study of new firm creation in Poland indicates their success was built on two important and related factors. One is the growth of new firms, which stimulated the growth of a centrist constituency who voted for parties supporting economic reforms. Second, the SLD adapted to this constituency by themselves becoming more economically liberal, as documented by Grzyma?a-Busse (2002). A conditional logit model of voter choice in the 1997 and 2001 elections relates votes to the distance between voters' preferences on economic policies and the positions of the competing parties. From this analysis we estimate that if the SLD had remained an ideological non-reformist party as did the KS?M in the Czech Republic and the CPRF in Russia it would have been a far weaker party as measured by vote and seat shares. Without the new firm creation, an ideological SLD cum KS?M could have been electorally successful as was the CPRF. The paper concludes by contrasting the the Polish, Czech and Russian post-Communist parties and extending the implications of the results to other developing and industrial economies faced with the need for structural change.     

A note on electoral competition and turnout in run-off electoral systems: Taking into account both endogeneity and attenuation bias

In this short note, I propose an identification strategy to estimate the causal effect of expected electoral competition on voter turnout in run-off systems taking into account both endogeneity and attenuation bias. I find that electoral competition significantly raises turnout. Not addressing attenuation bias yields estimates that are biased by up to 50%.     

Success and failure in electoral competition: Selective issue emphasis under incomplete issue ownership

Political parties are often argued to compete for voters by stressing issues they feel they own – a strategy known as ‘selective emphasis’. While usually seen as an electorally rewarding strategy, this article argues that cultivating ‘your’ themes in the public debate is not guaranteed to be electorally beneficial and may even become counter-productive. It describes the conditions under which ‘selective emphasis’ becomes counter-productive, and applies the argument to recent discussions regarding the strategies of mainstream parties confronting the extreme right.     

The impact of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition: evidence from a natural experiment

Measuring the effect of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition is complicated because the stringency of ballot access regulations cannot be treated as being exogenous to candidates’ entry decisions. This paper exploits the 1968 U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down Ohio’s ballot access law as a natural experiment to overcome the endogeneity problem. The evidence from difference-in-difference estimations suggests that the court’s decision and the accompanying sharp decrease in Ohio’s petition requirements resulted in major parties facing a significant increase in competition from third party and independent candidates.     

European integration and electoral democracy: How the European Union constrains party competition in the Member States

The assignment of policy competencies to the European Union has reduced the divergence of party policy positions nationally, leaving the electorate with fewer policy options. Building upon insights from spatial proximity theories of party competition, the convergence argument predicts convergence particularly in policy domains with increasing EU competence. As the policy commitments that derive from EU membership increase, parties become more constrained in terms of the feasible policy alternative they can implement when in office. The analysis uses manifesto data at the country‐party system level for nine policy domains. It uses ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation with country fixed effects, a lagged dependent variable and country corrected standard errors. Controlling for other factors that could plausibly explain policy convergence, the models also assess whether the convergent effect of party positions varies across different types of parties. The main finding is that in policy domains where the involvement of the EU has increased, the distance between parties' positions tends to decrease. The constraining impact of EU policy decisions differs between Member and non‐Member States. This effect is more apparent for the policy agendas of larger, mainstream and pro‐EU parties in the Member States.     

Party competition over decentralisation: The influence of ideology and electoral incentives on issue emphasis

Under what conditions is decentralisation a salient issue for state‐wide political parties? It is argued in this article that the extent to which state‐wide parties emphasise decentralisation depends on their strategic considerations: on their overall ideology, on the electoral incentives created by the context in which they compete, and on the interaction between the two. The results of the analysis of party manifestos in 31 countries since 1945 are as follows. First, parties that pay greater attention to cultural matters relative to economic matters tend to talk more about decentralisation. Second, the systemic salience of decentralisation also encourages parties to talk more about decentralisation. Third, the larger the regionally based ethnic groups within a country, the more salience all state‐wide political parties will attach to decentralisation. Finally, only parties that put greater relative emphasis on cultural matters tend to respond to the electoral threat of regionalist parties. The influence of territorial diversity on the salience of decentralisation thus works through two channels and is partly conditioned by political parties’ ideological profile.