Parties,Recruitment and Modernisation: Evidence from Local Election Candidates

Using pooled data from four separate nationwide surveys of local election candidates conducted from 2006–09 the paper assesses the role and importance of parties in the recruitment and selection of candidates. In many respects candidates are similar to councillors with men outnumbering women in a two to one ratio, with very few non-white candidates coming forward for selection and an age bias towards older rather than younger people. Candidates are found generally to have higher educational qualifications and to be employed in professional and managerial populations than in the public at large. Although a majority of candidates are resident in the ward that they contest a large fraction live elsewhere, suggesting that local parties cast the net widely during the recruitment process. The data suggest that the recruitment networks used by parties are relatively closed with many candidates reporting prior experience as local party officer holders or as members of charitable organisations and local public bodies. For two-thirds of candidates the initial decision to stand follows from a request by someone else, often a fellow party member. Women are more likely to be asked than men. Although candidates are aware of the current under-representation of some social and ethnic groups they are generally against using affirmative action measures to redress any imbalance. Although local parties are sometimes seen as contributing towards the problem of under-representation of some groups on council benches the data suggest than an increase in independent candidates would be unlikely to improve the situation and could perhaps cause it to deteriorate still further.     

Mobilizing party activism: A field experiment with party members and sympathizers

Electoral mobilization and persuasion are often characterized as two-stage processes, where parties activate their core supporters, who then mobilize and persuade larger shares of the electorate. While there is a lot of research on the second stage of this process, the mobilization and persuasion of the wider electorate by party activists, there is little causally identified evidence on whether party elites can encourage campaign activism among party members and sympathizers. To address this question, we conducted a randomized field experiment in cooperation with the Swiss Social Democratic Party in the context of the 2015 cantonal elections in Ticino. The experiment consisted of the randomized administration of telephone calls to members and strong supporters of the party, while their self-reported campaign activism and attitudes towards the campaign were measured in a two-wave online panel survey. Against expectations, we record null effects on various measures of campaign activism, including on the mobilization of relatives, and friends. The results raise questions about omitted variable bias in observational studies of party activism that consistently report large positive effects of party contact on the campaign activism of members and sympathizers.     

Do party leadership contests forecast British general elections?

When assessing election forecasts, two important criteria emerge: their accuracy (precision) and lead time (distance to event). Curiously, in both 2010 and 2015 the most accurate forecasts came from models having the longest lead time—albeit at most 12 months. Can we increase the lead time further, supposing we tolerate a small decrease in accuracy? Here, we develop a model with a lead time of more than 3 years. Our Party Leadership Model relies on the votes of MPs when selecting their party leader. We assess the forecasting quality of our model with both leave-one-out cross-validation and a before-the-fact forecast of the 2019 general election. Compared to both simple forecasting methods and other scientific forecasts, our model emerges as a leading contender. This result suggests that election forecasting may benefit from developing models with longer lead times, and that party leaders may influence election outcomes more than is usually thought.     

Membership vote for party leadership changes: Electoral effects and the causal mechanisms behind

Political parties in parliamentary democracies have increasingly democratized their leadership selection processes, incorporating the votes of party members. Despite generating numerous headlines, there has been a relative dearth of cross-national scholarly work on the electoral effects of selectorate expansion and the causal mechanisms behind them. This study fills this gap in the literature. Using observational data from eleven parliamentary democracies, we show that parties using membership selection can expect a polling boost when compared to those using more exclusive mechanisms. However, membership selection does not affect electoral performance. Nevertheless, our crossnational analyses and results from a survey experiment from Australia suggest that incorporating members generates excitement, demonstrates an openness to new ideas, and can be a signal of leader work ethic and a commitment to the democratic process, increasing leader legitimacy. We discuss the disconnect between these positive evaluations and the lack of electoral effects, and suggest possible strategies for parties to improve their electoral standing.     

Coattails and spillover-effects: Quasi-experimental evidence from concurrent executive and legislative elections

Concurrent elections are widely used to increase turnout. We theorize and show empirically how concurrency affects electoral outcomes. First, concurrency increases turnout and thereby the participation of peripheral voters. Second, in combined elections, one electoral arena affects the other. In our case of majoritarian executive elections concurrent to proportional representation (PR) legislative elections, the centripetal tendency of majoritarian elections colors off to the concurrent PR race. Third, concurrency also entails spillovers of the incumbency advantage of executive officeholders to the concurrent legislative race. Drawing on quasi-random variation in local election timing in Germany, we show that concurrency increases turnout as well as council votes for the incumbent mayor's party and centrist parties more generally, with slightly more pronounced gains for the political left. As a consequence, concurrent elections consolidate party systems and political power by leading to less fragmented municipal councils and more unified local governments.     

The downstream consequences of long waits: How lines at the precinct depress future turnout

Researchers have increasingly paid attention to the impact that the administrative component of elections has on voter behavior. Existing research has focused almost exclusively on the effect that legal changes--such as voter identification laws--have on turnout. This paper extends our understanding of the electoral process by exploring how one aspect of the precinct experience--standing in line to vote--can shape the turnout behavior of voters in subsequent elections. I demonstrate that for every additional hour a voter waits in line to vote, their probability of voting in the subsequent election drops by 1 percentage point. To arrive at these estimates, I analyze vote history files using a combination of exact matching and placebo tests to test the identification assumptions. I then leverage an unusual institutional arrangement in the City of Boston and longitudinal data from Florida to show that the result also holds at the precinct level. The findings in this paper have important policy implications for administrative changes that may impact line length, such as voter identification requirements and precinct consolidation. They also suggest that racial asymmetries in precinct wait times contribute to the gap in turnout rates between white and non-white voters.     

Hidden in plain sight? Irregularities on statutory forms and electoral fraud

The most common method of tabulating election results around the world is manually compiling paper forms at the local level. Recent election disputes in developing democracies, particularly in Africa, have centered on irregularities observed on these forms. However, scholars do not yet have a good understanding of the distribution of these irregularities, nor of their relationship to systematic fraud. In this paper, we theorize a catalog of irregularities that goes beyond simple vote tally editing. We use deep neural networks to identify these irregularities on forms from about 30,000 polling stations in Kenya’s 2013 presidential election. We find that although irregularities manifest differently in government and opposition strongholds, they do not correlate with election outcomes, and they are unaffected by the presence of electoral observers. Taken together, our findings suggest scholars of election integrity should pay greater attention to problems of benign human error and overtaxed bureaucrats.     

The conditional effect of personal vote-seeking behaviors on MPs electoral performance: Evidence from an open-list PR system

Considerable research argues that voters reward personal vote-seeking behaviors. The expected electoral gain would be the primary driver of MPs' action. Nevertheless, empirical evidence is scarce, and the findings do not always match the theoretical expectations. This article examines the electoral impact of personal vote-seeking behaviors, arguing in favor of integrating party electoral performance into the models. I also propose a new measure of electoral performance based on the evolution of MPs electoral results. Drawing on data from Finland, the findings globally support the theoretical arguments. MPs benefit from personal vote-seeking behaviors, primarily when their party improves its results. The findings have important implications for our knowledge of the personal vote and, more generally, the personalization of politics.     

How voter mobilization from short text messages travels within households and families: Evidence from two nationwide field experiments

Through two large GOTV field experiments in two different elections, we investigate the spillover effect to other household members and family members outside the household. We mobilized young voters with cell phone text messages, a campaign tactic unlikely to be observed by other persons than the treated. The direct effect varied but approximately 30 percent spilled over to other persons in the household, even parents. The effects are subtle and we cannot with certainty establish that a spillover effect exists. However, we demonstrate, using Bayesian updating, that even an initial skeptic becomes close to convinced that the effect spills over. Our study provides evidence by suggesting that young individuals’ decision to vote affect other household members, including their parents, to do the same. When young voters live without their parents, we find no evidence of spillovers to parents, suggesting that households are more important than families ties for turnout contagion.     

You have to pay to play: Candidate and party responses to the high cost of elections in Japan

What effect does the financial cost of running for office have on candidate entry decisions, and does it differ depending on a candidate's motivations for running? We use a regression discontinuity design and panel data analysis to estimate the causal effect of campaign costs on candidate entry in Japan, where the amount of money required as a deposit for ballot access increased periodically to become one of the highest in the world, and a considerable part of campaign costs. We find that candidates from the major office-seeking parties were likely to be replaced after losing the deposit, and that these parties nominated fewer candidates following increases in the deposit amount. However, we find no such deterrent effect for fringe candidates. This finding calls into question the effectiveness of the deposit at fulfilling its supposed purpose, and sheds light on the differences between the financial and strategic coordination incentives that influence the nomination decisions of parties.