Time for a change: The French elections of 1981 : II. The National Assembly elections

The Socialist Mitterrand won the French presidency by 52 per cent to the conservative Giscard's 48 per cent. To exercise real power, Mitterrand immediately dissolved the conservative Assembly, elected in 1978. The bonus of legitimacy enjoyed by the newly elected President, together with the constitutional arrangements which make effective, stable government dependent on an Assembly majority sympathetic to the President and the decline of the Communist party and the divisions within the Right all amplified Mittrrand's victory in the Assembly elections, won by the Left with 55 per cent to the Right's 44 per cent on the decisive ballot. With 38 per cent of the vote on the first ballot, the Socialists emerged with 268 seats after the second. That landslide (for France) was won on a low poll, thanks to the abstention and indiscipline of conservative and Communist supporters. It gives the Socialists a majority in the Assembly, only the second time in the Fifth Republic that a single party has had a majority by itself.     

Political change and stability of the popularity function: The French general election of 1981

France experienced in May, 1981, a drastic political change, the influence of which on stability of the popularity function, from V. Giscard d'Estaing to F. Mitterrand, is examined here. First, a survey of existing estimates of French popularity functions is presented, and the main problems they raise are briefly discussed. The theoretical effects of government change are then analyzed, with a distinction between global effects (honeymoon and others) and distribution effects; these effects are then linked to the moves of ideologically motivated voters. Finally, new estimates are presented on French data for two periods, the first corresponding to Giscard's tenure only and the second including Mitterrand's tenure. The main conclusion is that the popularity function remained fairly stable, except for a move in the intercept when the Socialists came to power. This move is, in large part, the result of attitudinal changes in the more ideologically oriented electors, as results on disaggregated data indirectly confirm.     

Electoral change and the floating voter: The reagan elections

This paper presents two perspectives on a fundamental issue of elections as mechanisms of democratic accountability. One is the interelection floating voter hypothesis, which implies that it is the least informed segment of the electorate that contributes most to electoral change. The second perspective is from V. O. Key's argument that vote switching is rooted in rational policy concerns. A direct test of Key's formulation of the problem on the Reagan election victories of 1980 and 1984 adds to the evidence supporting Key's perspective. The reasons why some voters hold firm to particular parties and candidates while others switch support is well explained by their different positions on matters of party, policies, and judgments of the candidates. Vote switching is not simply the by-product of an ill-informed segment of the electorate responding to its meager grasp of the short-term stimuli of a campaign. Vote switchers appear to judge the policies and the performance of an incumbent against their best estimates of these qualities in the competing candidate. The data are from the 1980 and 1984 CBS/New York Times exit polls.This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1985 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans.     

Notes on Recent Elections The Irish general elections of 1981 and 1982

The general election of June 1981 in the Irish Republic replaced a single-party Fianna Fail government led by Charles Haughey, with a comfortable majority, by a minority Fine Gael/ Labour coalition led by Dr Garret FitzGerald. When that government fell on a budget defeat in January 1982, the ensuing election restored Haughey and Fianna Fail to office but as another minority government. So the two elections of 1981-2 may have ushered in a period of political instability in the Irish Republic replacing 50 years of stable government, 40 of them by one party.     

Pay for politicians and campaign spending: evidence from the French municipal elections

Public Choice - This paper investigates the relationship between taxation and firm performance in developing countries. Combining firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys and tax data...     

The influence of local and national economic conditions on French legislative elections

This article's aim consists in building and estimating a model which explains and forecasts the outcomes of the French legislative elections by department. This model, which constitutes the first attempt for such a geographical level, emphasises the role of the economic and political factors in the explanation of the legislative vote. The model seems to be very accurate in forecasting the elections of the past at the local and national level. Furthermore, its behaviour for the 2002 election was very satisfactory. This model is therefore a reliable alternative to the vote intention polls as an electoral forecasting instrument.     

Voting and economic factors in French elections for the European Parliament

This article builds and estimates several econometric models that explain and forecast the outcomes of the French elections for the European Parliament. These models show the influence of the change in the local unemployment rate to explain the vote for the moderate Left and the moderate Right in the French elections for the European Parliament. These models appear to be accurate in forecasting the elections of the past, and their behavior for the 2009 French election for the European Parliament is satisfactory.     

Departmental elections and the changing landscape of French politics

The departmental elections of March 2015 redrew the French political landscape, setting the new terms of electoral competition in advance of the regional elections of December 2015 and, more critically, the presidential election of April–May 2017. These elections saw the far-right National Front (FN) come top in both rounds only to be outmanoeuvred by the mainstream parties and prevented from winning a single department. As a case study in vote–seat distortion, the elections highlighted a voting system effective in keeping the FN out of executive power but deficient in terms of democratic representation and inadequate as a response to the new tripartite realities of France's changing political landscape.     

Campaign resources and electoral success: Evidence from the 2002 French parliamentary elections

We examine the factors that improve the candidates’ likelihood of winning an election by drawing on information from campaign resources used by candidates running in the 2002 French parliamentary election. The main effects that we wish to analyze are the candidates’ gender, political affiliation and possible incumbency. We find that the contributions the candidates received and their political affiliations determine their acceding to the second round of the elections. But surprisingly once they make it to the second round, the contributions cease to be relevant; only the candidates’ gender, incumbency and the actual spending rather than the contribution levels matter.     

The impact of campaign expenditures on political competition in the French legislative elections of 1993

We use regression analysis to estimate the effect that campaign money had on the votes of challengers and incumbents in the 1993 elections to the French legislative assembly. Incumbent candidates can at best expect to win 1.01% of the popular vote for each extra franc they spend per registered voter in their district. Challengers can expect to win at least twice as much as this. Simulations show that if campaign spending ceilings were halved, incumbents would have gained an extra ten percent of the popular vote over their closest challenging rivals. The regression analysis also suggests that voters react negatively to candidates who rely heavily on their own money for their outlays and reward candidates who rely on contributions from private individuals. These results suggest that campaign spending ceilings may inhibit political competition, and that voters may resist a candidate who relies on narrow sources of funding.     

The procedural presidency of George Bush

He is author of Searching for Safety; Risk and Culture; Budgeting; Speaking Truth to Power; The Beleaguered Presidency;and coauthor of Presidential Elections.