The US mid-term elections of 1982

The 1982 US election completed the destruction of the myth that 1980 saw a Republican landslide. It disappointed the election-eve expectations of the Democrats, but was far crueller to the earlier hopes of the Republicans, though their financial advantage kept their losses down. Old political forces-parties and unions-played a more active part than in recent years, and turnout rose for the first time for two decades. The results should make internal differences less divisive among Democrats, more so among Republicans, especially with the crushing exposure of the bogus claims of the ‘New Right’. But if the economy recovers, so may the Republican party.     

The Irish election of November 1982

Changes in centre‐periphery relations, both institutional (most notably decentralisation) and socio‐economic (the growing importance of cities) have radically altered the environment in which French political parties operate. The unprecedentedly close links between parties and the local political system that have resulted have profoundly affected power structures within the parties. Just as the Fifth Republic ‘presidentialised’ parties, so decentralisation has ‘localised’ them. The case of the Rassemblement pour la République, the inheritor to the top‐down, presidentialist tradition of Gaullism, is a remarkable illustration of this transformation.     

Muffling the swing: STV and the Irish general election of 1981

This article explores alternative hypotheses for variation in the political salience of unemployment. The differences between the political opinions of employed and unemployed people are used as a proxy for the qualitative importance of unemployment. Unemployment is not found to be more politically salient when government support of the unemployed is more generous or when jobless spells are shorter. Far more important is the character of employment. Unemployment is more politically salient in countries where employment guarantees a basic livelihood. The data also suggest that unemployment has greater salience in countries where the unemployed are more likely to use state employment exchanges in searching for work. Two conclusions are suggested. First, public toleration of high unemployment in recent decades may be partly the result of the rise of atypical work arrangements. Second, while it is debatable whether social‐democratic protections of employment standards increase unemployment rates, such efforts may inadvertently increase the political costs of high unemployment.     

The 2011 general and presidential elections in Singapore

For the first time in Singapore's history, two elections were held in a year. In 2011, Singaporeans voted in a general election on 7 May and in another competitive presidential election on 27 August. Faced with a stronger opposition force and an emboldened electorate, the ruling People's Action Party won the elections but achieved the worst results since the country's independence.     

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.     

Lessons of the 1982 English local elections

The 1982 local elections in Britain were the first elections fought on a nationwide basis by the Liberal/Social Democratic Party Alliance. Although there are methodological problems, the results in provincial England can be analysed to provide clues to the character of support for Britain's newest political formation. Although the Alliance achieved a substantially higher vote than the Liberals had in 1980, it proved difficult to achieve a breakthrough in terms of wards won—especially for the SDP who tended to contest poorer prospects than their Liberal partners. There is only weak evidence that the SDP could mobilize new sources of support. The even spread of the Alliance's vote was such as to cast doubt on their ability to win seats at the next general election unless a very high level of support is attained.     

A general probabilistic spatial theory of elections

In this paper, we construct a general probabilistic spatial theory of elections and examine sufficient conditions for equilibrium in two-candidate contests with expected vote-maximizing candidates. Given strict concavity of the candidate objective function, a unique equilibrium exists and the candidates adopt the same set of policy positions. Prospective uncertainty, reduced policy salience, degree of concavity of voter utility functions, some degree of centrality in the feasible set of policy locations, and restrictions on the dimensionality of the policy space are all stabilizing factors in two-candidate elections. 3. CITIZEN. We have been called so of many, not that our heads are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely colored. And truly I think if all our wits were to issue out of one skill, they would fly east, west, north, south, and their consent of one direct way should be at once to all points o' the compass. (Shakespeare, coriolanus II.iii. 19–26)