Electoral contexts that impede voter coordination

An electorate can effectively coordinate on the viable parties in its district, or a relatively large proportion of its voters may “waste” their votes on parties that fail to obtain office. Avoiding wasted votes can be more or less difficult depending on several characteristics of the electoral context. Unfortunately, many of the features of electoral contexts hypothesized to cause vote wastage have been tested piecemeal on only a handful of (non-random) cases and/or with data inappropriately aggregated to the national, rather than the district, level. Based on results from 2007 districts in 183 lower chamber elections across 21 countries, we find evidence that new electoral rules, the entry of new parties, past electoral volatility, and high district magnitudes are all likely to make coordination a challenge, with entry by new parties having the largest, most consistent effect.     

The nationalization of presidential elections in the Americas

This article examines the nationalization of electoral change in presidential elections. It presents a technique to measure the national electoral swing and the subnational deviation in the electoral swing for each major presidential contender, for each consecutive pair of elections. The national swing indicates the uniform shift across electoral districts, whereas the subnational deviation indicates the extent of new district-level variation for any particular election. In addition, the nationalization score reveals the relative magnitude of the national and subnational components of district-level electoral change, which has the advantage of allowing comparisons across countries, parties, and elections. The article analyzes relative nationalization scores for all major candidates in 74 presidential elections from 14 countries in the Americas, and for electoral change that occurs between first and second round contests in majority run-off presidential elections.     

The architecture of the Electoral College,the House size effect,and the referendum paradox

Using data from U.S. presidential elections, we show how seemingly insignificant changes to what we call the “architecture” of the Electoral College can cause different candidates to be elected President, even when no one changes how they vote. We consider varying the size of the House of Representatives, the method of apportionment, the number of “Senate” electoral votes cast by each state, and the lower bound on the number of “House” electoral votes cast by each state. We consider, in particular, elections with a “referendum paradox”. In these elections, the electoral vote winner is not the popular vote winner. Our work extends Neubauer and Zeitlin (2003) who analyzed the case of the 2000 election. We give an explanation for the effects that we observe in the data.     

Trust in elections,vote buying,and turnout in Latin America

Although national elections in Latin America are now described as reasonably free and fair by international observations teams, electoral processes are still affected by a series of malpractices (unequal access to the media and public resources, registration problems, vote buying). These irregularities negatively affect citizens' trust in elections. In this paper, we analyze the consequences of low trust in elections and exposure to vote buying practices on electoral participation in Latin America. Using data from the 2010 wave of LAPOP surveys, we find that perceiving that the election is unfair reduces the willingness to participate in national elections, but receiving material incentives during the campaign has the opposite effect of increasing electoral participation. We also show that the effect of trust in elections on turnout is larger in countries where voting is not mandatory.     

Approval and plurality voting with uncertainty: Info-gap analysis of robustness

Voting algorithms are used to choose candidates by an electorate. However, voter participation is variable and uncertain, and projections from polls or past elections are uncertain because voter preferences may change. Furthermore, electoral victory margins are often slim. Variable voter participation or preferences, and slim margins of decision, have implications for choosing a voting algorithm. We focus on approval voting (AV) and compare it to plurality voting (PV), regarding their robustness to uncertainty in voting outcomes. We ask: by how much can voting outcomes change without altering the election outcomes? We see fairly consistent empirical differences between AV and PV. In single-winner elections, PV tends to be more robust to vote uncertainty than AV in races with large victory margins, while AV tends to be more robust at low victory margins. Two conflicting concepts—approval flattening and approval magnification—explain this tendency for reversal of robust dominance between PV and AV. We also examine the robustness to vote uncertainty of PV in elections for proportional representation of parties.

     

Presidential coattails and electoral coordination in multilevel elections: Comparative lessons from Brazil

This article seeks to understand how concurrent presidential and gubernatorial elections in strong federal systems affect electoral coordination and coattails voting between national and subnational levels of government. We seek to determine whether the nationalizing effect of presidential elections can overcome the strong incentives for regionalization that can arise in federal systems. We use individual-level survey data and time-series cross-sectional electoral data from Brazil, a federal country with decentralized electoral institutions that has recently adopted concurrent presidential and gubernatorial elections. We find that the congruence between national and subnational elections increases when elections are temporally proximate and the effective number of presidential candidates is low. In short, the coattails effect can not only operate “horizontally,” by shaping national legislative elections, but also “vertically,” by shaping subnational elections.     

Banzhaf voting power, random elections, and the Electoral College winner’s advantage

In a recent article, Riggs et al. (2009) aim to measure the ‘Electoral College winner's advantage’—in particular, the extent to which the winner’s electoral vote margin of victory is magnified as a result of (i) the ‘two electoral vote add-on’ given to each state and (ii) the ‘winner-take-all’ mode of casting state electoral votes. Their results are based on two sets of one million simulated two-candidate elections. This note has two purposes. The first is to demonstrate that RHR’s simulation estimates can be calculated precisely using the theory of voting power measurement. The second is to correct several flaws in RHR’s analysis, the most substantial of which pertains to the effect of the two electoral vote add-on, which actually has a negative effect on the winner’s advantage.     

The rational timing of parliamentary elections

This paper presents a rational choice model for the timing of parliamentary elections in political systems where the government has the option of calling an early election. The optimal timing of elections involves the government weighing the benefits of calling an election versus the costs and is modelled mathematically as an optimal stopping problem. The model implies that the timing of elections depends upon time left in the government's term, the degree of electoral uncertainty, the volatility of government popularity, the government's time rate of discount, and institutional constraints such as the length of term and whether the government is likely to be forced from power by a vote of no confidence.     

It's not always the campaign – Explaining inter-election switching in Germany, 2009–2013

Inter-election volatility is essential for the functioning of democracy. In accounting for the underlying processes prior research focused on campaign volatility, while neglecting between-campaign volatility. This neglect is not warranted however. Between-campaign periods may include multiple events that set the stage for electoral competition and shape citizens' political cognitions, attitudes and party preference until the next election. Depending on the flow of political communication, between-campaign periods may considerably contribute to inter-election volatility. Drawing on a data set from an intra- and inter-election panel survey conducted in the 2009 and 2013 German federal elections, the evidence suggests that between-campaign changes in party preferences and political attitudes were at least as important as within-campaign changes in contributing to inter-election switching. Moreover, political involvement is less powerful in conditioning electoral volatility than suggested by conventional wisdom. The analysis thus provides a first step toward a general account of inter-election volatility.     

Do volatile voters vote less correctly? An analysis of correct voting among vote (intention) switchers in US presidential election campaigns

The literature on electoral volatility and the literature on electoral campaigns hold contradictory views on voters switching vote (intention) during the campaign. In this note, we shed new light on this contradiction, making two contributions. First, we investigate the extent to which stable and volatile voters choose the correct party. Second, we distinguish levels of correct voting and the impact of the act of switching on the correctness of the vote. Our analyses of vote-switching in American elections show that, while volatile voters are less likely to vote correctly, they are more likely to switch from an incorrect to the correct party than vice versa. Furthermore, we show that following the campaign more closely makes voters more likely to switch vote (intention) towards the correct party.     

The electoral effectiveness of constituency campaigning in the 2010 British general election: The ‘triumph’ of Labour?

This article establishes a model of likely campaign effectiveness, before examining the intensity of constituency campaigning at the 2010 general election in Britain and its subsequent impact on electoral outcomes, using both aggregate and individual level data. It shows that constituency campaigning yielded benefits in varying degrees for all three main parties and that Labour’s constituency campaign efforts were effective despite the electoral context, and ultimately affected the overall outcome of the election. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of the circumstances under which campaigns are likely to be more or less effective, and provide further evidence that a carefully managed campaign stands the most chance of delivering tangible electoral payoffs.     

The effect of the choices available on voting behaviour: the two Japanese elections of 1993

Voters make their choices based on an interaction between their preferences and the options available. One cannot vote for a candidate or a party that is not running in one's district. Voting research has heretofore focused almost exclusively upon voter preferences, assuming that all the relevant options are available to all voters. In this paper, we seek to redress the balance somewhat by focusing on variation in the options available to voters in the 1993 Japanese general election. In that election, three new parties ran and were themselves a major issue in the campaign. Voters were asked to express themselves on the question, “should we break the mold of postwar politics by voting for a new party?” We demonstrate that electoral results and voting behavior both varied significantly between those electoral districts with, and those without, a new party option. There were, in effect, two elections in 1993, one in which voters chose between new and established parties and another in which voters chose from among the established parties only. We argue that one cannot assume that an electoral outcome reflects the “will of the people” without adding the important caveat, “given the available alternatives”.     

Political parties and the transnational mobilisation of the emigrant vote

The relationship between political parties and voters is usually analysed in a national framework. However, the majority of states worldwide allow their emigrant citizens to have an absentee vote. This article analyses how parties confront the challenge of mobilising voters across borders. It presents an analytical framework for comparing the scope of party transnational mobilisation strategies across different electoral systems. Drawing on a contextualised qualitative analysis, the article analyses transnational electoral mobilisation of the emigrant vote in recent elections in Spain, France, Italy and Romania. The analysis shows that a cost–benefit analysis of electoral incentives explains the scope of transnational campaign efforts of many of the political parties. Yet the article also suggests locating the analysis of party strategies in the particular context of the transnational electoral field, including the high dispersion, uncertainty and volatility of the emigrant vote and the overlap between the electoral arenas among emigrants and at home.     

Institutions and the stabilization of party systems in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe

Most explanations of party system stability focus on the strength of mass-elite linkages. We highlight the role of institutions, focusing on how electoral rules and elected institutions, especially the presidency, impact elites' incentives to coordinate on a stable set of parties or to form new parties, thus affecting electoral volatility. Using Central and Eastern European elections data, we find that directly elected presidents increase volatility and that presidential power magnifies this effect. Absent a directly elected president, high district magnitude is associated with increased volatility, but district magnitude dampens the impact of an elected president on volatility; hence, our findings underscore the interactive impact of institutions on party systems. We also find evidence that bicameralism and concurrence of presidential and parliamentary elections decrease electoral volatility. Our model not only explains persistently high electoral volatility in Eastern Europe, but the extreme stability of Western European party systems.     

Beyond personal vote incentives: Dividing the vote in preferential electoral systems

Comparative studies of preferential electoral systems have paid much attention to the incentives for personalized instead of party-centered campaigns, but they have largely ignored how some of these systems allow “allocation errors” and so create incentives for parties to “manage” the vote and intraparty campaigns. We discuss how the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) and single transferable vote (STV) systems create these incentives, and we illustrate the degree to which they affect actual electoral results across seven preferential electoral systems. The analysis reveals statistically significant differences in the vote inequality among incumbent cohorts (members of the same party and district), indicating the strong influence of vote division incentives over candidate-centered electoral environments. The results also have important implications for comparative research on legislative turnover and the incumbency advantage.     

Leaders, voters and activists in the elections in Great Britain 2005 and 2010

Discussion of the relationship between parties and the electorate is often based on the notion of partisan constituencies, that parties adopt policy positions that correspond to the average position of the party supporters. In contrast, the Downsian “spatial model” assumes that parties are purely opportunistic and maneuver to gain as many votes as possible. A third, more empirical model, based on the early work of Stokes, assumes that voter choice is based on the evaluation of each of the party leader’s competence or ability to deliver policy success. Such an evaluation can be provided by individual voter overall assessment in terms of the leaders’ character traits.This paper attempts to relate these three classes of models by examining the elections in Great Britain in 2005 and 2010. Using the British Election Study, we construct spatial models of these elections in Great Britain as well as in the three regions of England, Scotland and Wales. The models incorporate the electoral perceptions of character traits. We compare the equilibrium vote maximizing positions with the partisan positions, estimated by taking the mean of each of the parties voters’ preferred positions. We define an equilibrium to be a stable attractor if the vote share at the equilibrium exceeds the share at the partisan position by a significant proportion (determined by the implicit error of the stochastic model). We infer that none of the equilibria are stable attractors, and suggest that the partisan positions are also preferred by the party activists, the key supporters of each party.     

Patterns of intra-election volatility: the impact of political knowledge*

One key trend changing political environments across advanced industrial democracies is increasing electoral volatility. Despite extensive research, at the individual level we still know relatively little about the mechanisms behind electoral volatility during election campaigns, including the impact of political knowledge. Against this background and based on a four-wave panel study in the context of the 2014 Swedish national election, the purpose of this paper is to investigate (a) patterns of intra-election volatility and the impact of (b) political knowledge on patterns of electoral volatility. Distinguishing between party alienation, crystallization, wavering, reinforcement, and conversion, among other things, findings show some effects from political knowledge on patterns of electoral volatility but only for acquired political knowledge.     

The British general election of 2010 under different voting rules

The 2010 British election resulted in what the British refer to as a “hung Parliament” for the first time in over a generation. This result further heightened the debate over the fairness and utility of the nation’s centuries-old first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. Survey data are used to simulate the election outcome under four different electoral systems beyond FPTP: round-robin pair-wise comparisons, the Borda count, the alternative vote, and Coombs' method. Results suggest that in 2010, the Liberal-Democrats were Condorcet preferred to all other parties and would have won a national election under every tested method except the alternative vote, the method supported by the Liberal-Democrats during the referendum in May 2011 and, of course, FPTP as actually used.     

Electoral volatility and the dynamics of electoral reform

Recent elections in Europe have shown that a context of increasing citizen distrust towards democratic institutions may lead to very high levels of electoral volatility and to the emergence of new parties. On the other hand, institutional reforms are sometimes presented as a solution to citizens’ discontent with political institutions. Focusing on a specific type of political institution ? electoral systems ? the question addressed in this study is whether high levels of electoral volatility may trigger electoral reforms. The article investigates the conditions under which reforms affecting the electoral system’s degree of openness to new parties were enacted in 25 European countries between 1945 and 2012. The findings demonstrate that volatility due to the emergence of new parties is the most powerful explanation to account for the introduction of electoral reforms, particularly those that hinder the entry of new parties into the system.     

Federal Political Fragmentation in Mexico's 2015 Elections

The 2015 congressional, gubernatorial and mayoral elections in Mexico display the continuation of political changes that started 15 years ago. The most notorious change in 2015 is the electoral success of non-mainstream parties, which have increased their vote share vis-à-vis the mainstream parties, the Party of National Action (PAN), the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), and the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD). These mainstream parties lost important vote shares, although the PRI has shown itself to be more resilient to electoral volatility than the other parties. The increase of volatility in Mexico favours the alternation of the parties in power; however, it also increases political fragmentation. This article argues that in a context of growing electoral volatility and political fragmentation, presidential authority is weakened, giving rise to the dispersion of power to other levels of government. Furthermore, the article suggests that party volatility presents important territorial variation in Mexico.