The Recall of MPs Act 2015: Petitions,Polls and Problems

Under the terms of the Recall of MPs Act 2015, there have been three recall petitions brought against MPs who have committed misconduct. The outcomes have been variable. The first petition failed to attract enough signatures to trigger a by‐election. The second led to the unseating of the MP, who declined the opportunity to stand in the subsequent by‐election. The third led to the removal of the MP and an unsuccessful candidature to regain his seat at the by‐election. Variation has not been confined to outcomes. There have been differences in how the legislation has been implemented—in terms of the ease of access of constituents to the recall petition. This article suggests that in the interests of fairness and transparency, there is a strong case for adjusting the legislation to ensure national standardisation of local implementation.     

The verdict in the polls: how government stability is affected by popular support

The idea that the stability of governments is affected by how they are performing in the polls is both intuitive and popular in the literature. When support is low the government might be inclined to replace parties or the prime minister in order to regain support, thus forming a replacement government. Alternatively, a government doing well in the polls might opportunistically try to schedule an early election to capitalise on its favourable prospects. But despite the popularity of the idea, it has thus far not been tested empirically whether government stability is in fact influenced by popular support. This article aims to address this lacuna. Using a relatively new dataset with more than 12,000 unique polls, and recently developed Bayesian models for pooling the polls, it is here shown that government stability is in fact impacted by popular support. Governments display clear signs of electoral opportunism when they are polling well and, conversely, dissolve the government, without calling an election, when polling is bad. The results are strongest when there are few parties in the government, since agreement on the timing for a discretionary termination is easier when fewer players need to agree.     

Has the gender gap in voter turnout really disappeared?

According to conventional wisdom, the traditional gender gap in voting has disappeared or even reversed in most established democracies. Drawing on the existing literature on differences between the sexes in political engagement and on pioneering voter turnout theories, this article questions the conventional assumption and hypothesises that women still participate at a lower rate in less important elections. It systematically tests this hypothesis by exploring the impact of gender on voter turnout in different electoral arenas. The empirical analyses of two cross-national datasets (Making Electoral Democracy Work and the European Election Study) demonstrate that although there is generally no gender gap in first-order elections, women tend to vote less than men in second-order contests. This reflects lower levels of interest in politics among women and their lower levels of knowledge about politics when it comes to second-order elections.     

Image repair in the aftermath of inaccurate polling: How the news media responded to getting it wrong in 1948 and 2016

The US presidential elections of 1948 and 2016 produced surprise outcomes when the predicted winners ended up losing the election. Using image repair theory, this article explains the strategies the media used to repair their image in light of predicting the wrong winner. Using a qualitative analysis of news coverage that immediately followed the 1948 and 2016 presidential elections, this study finds that the media utilized similar image repair strategies of offering explanations for poor information, highlighting the media’s good reporting, diminishing the harm caused by the inaccurate predictions, and justifying the inaccurate predictions of both elections. However, the media responses in 1948 and 2016 differed greatly in tone and in the utilization of a new attack strategy to deflect criticism of the media itself. These strategies suggest that media use of image restoration is limited because of the unique societal expectations placed on the press, and that the media’s inaccurate 2016 predictions and subsequent attack strategies may have been contributed to the heightened criticism of mainstream news.     

The leadership dilemma: Examining the impact of strong leaders on parties

Party leaders are often regarded as crucial to a party's success. Successful leaders tend to be big personalities who dominate their party's organisation, policy development and electoral campaigns. But does that control come with a price? We test to see if such leaders damage their parties in the medium term. This happens because strong leaders might be ceded too much control of the party organisation, policy and electoral strategy. We specifically hypothesise that political parties will go through a period of leadership instability and electoral decline after strong leaders step down. Using a dataset with elections under party leaders in nine countries over a 25-year period, and a qualitative case study, we find some evidence for the theory, which should prompt further research of the question.     

Political support through representation by the government. Evidence from Dutch panel data

Research on political support demonstrates that satisfaction with democracy is higher among electoral winners than losers, and that it is higher for citizens who are ideologically more congruent with the government. In this paper, I analyze how support for the political system is affected by representation by the government. Expanding on previous studies, I leverage long-run panel data from the Dutch LISS panel spanning over several electoral cycles. Drawing on various measures that go beyond the distinction between election winners and losers and also measure how close citizens are to the government coalition as a whole, I show that being well represented by the government has a wide-ranging positive relationship with satisfaction with democracy, external efficacy and trust in political institutions. While this relationship is mostly short-run, political support can decline substantially if non-representation persists in the long-run. This highlights the relevance of long-run panel data for studying the consequences of representation.     

Are European Elections Second-Order Elections for Everyone?

Second-order election (SOE) theory has been used to explain voting behaviour in European elections. Voters believe that less is at stake in some elections and some voters hence tend to cast a protest vote. However, most studies on the topic have focused on the demand side of SOEs – i.e. on the voters – and have ignored or only partially tackled the supply side – i.e. the strategic behaviour of parties – and excluded small and marginal parties (SMPs). However, SMPs may have greater incentive to seriously compete in SOEs. The 2019 European Parliament elections in Germany were particularly interesting to SMPs as there was no voting threshold, thereby increasing the chances of SMPs. To capture whether SMPs view European elections as first-order elections and therefore expend more resources than parliamentary parties on these elections, I analysed campaign expenditures and manifestos. Results indicate that SMPs act within a rational actor framework, though not unequivocally.