A voter-centric explanation of the success of ideological candidates for the U.S. house

In recent years, ideological candidates for the U.S. House have become increasingly successful, to the point where their chances of being elected are indistinguishable from moderates. However, scholars have still not uncovered exactly why this is happening. Using survey data from the American National Election Studies, I find that voter-centric explanations of vote choice – a voter's partisanship, ideology, and presidential approval rating – have increasingly predicted their vote choice in U.S. House elections from 1980 to 2016. Using data on candidate ideology, I find that candidate ideology is an increasingly poor predictor of individual vote choice over time. Original experimental data supports these claims, finding only a small electoral advantage for moderates, compared to ideologues of their own party, and evidence suggesting that, at least among Democrats, ideological candidates are rated more favorably than moderates. Taken together, these results suggest that the increased electoral success of ideological candidates can be attributed to changes in voters' decision calculus, rather than structural or candidate-centric explanations.     

Perfect Political Storm

After months of battering by allegations of cronyism and sustained hostile media from London's only paid for newspaper, Ken Livingstone's election campaign turned into the perfect political campaign. His third term bid to be Mayor of London wrecked on the high seas of democracy as the government grappled with economic gloom, a credit crunch and its lowest poll rating     

TR versus PR: Effects of the French double ballot

This paper presents a natural experiment, comparing the effects of two-round (TR) and proportional representation (PR) voting rules in French cantonal and regional elections. A series of rigorous model estimations demonstrates that the two electoral types clearly produce distinct outcomes. TR systems bring about less extremist party voting, less party competition, and perhaps less vote turnout, when compared to PR systems. These findings call into question the lack of attention to TR effects, and the notion that TR is not really a distinct electoral form.     

The unfortunate natural experiment in ballot design: The Scottish Parliamentary elections of 2007

The 2007 Scottish Parliamentary elections were notable for the extensive variation across constituencies in rejected ballots (ranging from 1.90% to 12.09%). This paper uses an unfortunate natural experiment to identify the influence of ballot design on the occurrence of rejected ballots, or ‘residual votes’. In two electoral regions, visual prompts were removed and instructions were abbreviated on the (already poorly designed) ballot papers. Using zero-truncated negative binomial regression to model total residual votes as well as constituency and regional undervotes and overvotes, we find clear evidence that these changes made a major contribution to the extent of residual votes in constituencies within those regions. The findings emphasise that ballot design is not a trivial subject that can be neglected by electoral administrators.     

新加坡的民族政策及其运作

新加坡是一个多民族国家。独立后,新加坡政府采取了很多有效措施解决民族问题,如进行国家认同与统一国民意识教育,建设公共组屋使各族混居促进和谐共处,让人民协会发挥预警功能,实现了各族和谐融洽共同建设家园,民族政策取得重大成就,是世界上民族和谐方面做得最好的国家之一。     

新加坡学生资助政策的特点及其启示

新加坡资助学生的政策体系比较完善,同时也有其独特性,如资助公平、资助形式多样且资助范围广泛、资助经费来源方式宽广以及资助政策灵活等特点。这些措施对于改进目前中国学生资助政策中存在的问题具有一定的借鉴意义。     

20世纪90年代以来新加坡高等教育的改革与发展

本文探讨了新加坡20世纪90年代进入大众化阶段之后其高等教育的改革与发展,对其中3个方面的改革做了重点论述与分析:规模扩大后的质量提高、大学的自治改革和高等教育的国际化。这3个方面同样是我国高等教育从大国走向强国必须面对的,新加坡发展高等教育的经验值得我们借鉴参考。     

Political uncertainty and corporate investment: Evidence from India

This article examines the relationship between political uncertainty and corporate investments in India. Using the data of 771 non-financial Indian firms for the period 2007 Q1 to 2020 Q4 and for three general elections, 2009, 2014, and 2019, the study confirms a significant negative impact of political uncertainty on corporate investments and a pronounced impact of political uncertainty on corporate investment in closely contested elections. Also, we find that corporate investment tends to rise post-election. Additionally, we find that the negative relationship between political uncertainty and corporate investment is more pronounced for politically sensitive industries and firms facing higher financial constraints.     

Succession effects in presidential elections

What is the impact of ex-presidents on the electoral performance of their party's successor candidates for the office and how long after a president has left office are successor effects electorally significant? Mattei and Weisberg (1994) argue that successor effects are large primarily when the vice president runs for office immediately at the end of the term of the president under whom they served. Timeliness and the association between presidents and their vice presidents account for succession effects. This paper challenges the Mattei-Weisberg successor effects perspective, arguing that significant successor effects can be possible for non-vice presidential candidates and long after a president has left office. Using American National Election Study data, I add numerous successions to those Mattei and Weisberg investigated. Analysis finds that succession effects apply to non-vice presidential candidates. Further, some ex-presidents may influence voting decisions long after they left office. There is also a hint in these data that succession effects have climbed over time, because as polarization has increased, the linkage between presidents and their parties has tightened.     

Going on the offensive: Negative messaging in British general elections

What drives British parliamentary candidates to attack their opponents? Using an original dataset of approximately 7500 general election leaflets from four elections between 2010 and 2019, we offer the first study into the conditions under which British parliamentary candidates use negative messaging. We find that leaflets from opposition candidates and candidates contesting marginal (i.e., competitive) seats are more likely to include messages about their opponent(s), which suggests that candidates respond to the incentives and pressures that come from both their local and national environment when determining whether to include negative messaging in their leaflets. Moreover, we find that, as seats become more marginal, candidates from government parties become just as likely as opposition parties to engage in negative messaging, and therefore, voters in marginal seats are likely to experience more negative campaigns than those residing in seats where the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Taken together, our findings make an important contribution to the growing body of literature that explores how candidates use negative messaging in party-centred systems.