Campaigns and the prediction of election outcomes: Can historical and campaign-period prediction models be combined?

There are two approaches to predicting election outcomes: (1) a historical approach, which uses past election results alongside macroeconomic and political variables to forecast election results up to a year in advance, and (2) a campaign-oriented approach, which uses current campaign trends to forecast vote shares at the end of the campaign. They are in some way at odds—one approach says the campaign doesn't matter, the other focuses entirely on the campaign. This article considers whether the two approaches might be usefully combined; it considers whether the prediction errors in historical models may be related to trends during the campaign. That possibility is tested here using 17 elections in the US, UK and Canada, combining historical predictions and automated content analyses of campaign-period media content. Results suggest that campaigns do not account for errors in the historical predictions; but there may be other ways in which campaigns matter in conjunction with historical models.     

How governments strategically time welfare state reform legislation: empirical evidence from five European countries

Abstract

Building on studies on the political business cycle, the literature on welfare state retrenchment has argued that governments which cut the welfare state try to avoid blame by implementing painful measures in the beginning of the mandate and expanding benefits as elections approach. In contrast to this linear relationship, this article argues that governments often feel pressured to fulfil (mostly expansionary) campaign promises during the first months in office. Consequently, cutting right away is not what should be expected. Instead, a more nuanced, U-shaped timing trajectory is probable with a period in the beginning characterised by both cuts and fulfilment of expansionary pledges, followed by a period of cutbacks, and finally an expansive phase towards the end of a mandate. This argument is tested on our new original dataset of legislative changes in five European countries – Britain, Denmark, Finland, France and Germany – during the last four decades.     

How (often) do voters change their consideration sets?

The consideration set model posits that in multi-party elections voters decide in two stages. We expect that in the consideration stage, when voters select viable options, ideological proximity is a key determinant, while in the choice stage election-specific factors become particularly important. This would imply that consideration sets are rather stable and that changes in voting preferences occur mainly within ideologically coherent consideration sets. This study examines both claims by analyzing panel survey data from Sweden and the Netherlands. Consideration sets were indeed rather stable, more so than voting intentions. After one year, voters still considered the same party in 81% of cases and only 13% of respondents shifted between ideological camps. This indicates that voters changed electoral preferences primarily within the boundaries of relatively stable consideration sets and ideological camps. These findings help to understand how elections can be volatile, despite the strong impact of highly stable ideological orientations.     

Confidence in an election authority and satisfaction with democracy: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment of a failed election in Sweden

Contemporary research on electoral integrity has focused on the functioning, evaluation, and legitimacy of electoral processes in emerging democracies. By contrast, this study investigates whether a failed election in a well-established democracy can affect individuals' evaluations of the electoral management body, the Election Authority, and whether those evaluations affect satisfaction with democracy. Using the case of a Swedish regional election in 2010 that had to be rerun due to procedural mistakes in the vote handling, we found that, in the short term, individuals’ confidence in the Election Authority was reduced after it was announced that the election had to be rerun because of the mistakes. Subsequently, this decreased confidence was strongly associated with less satisfaction with democracy at the regional and national level. As good news for the authority, after a successful rerun election, confidence rebounded to the levels prior to the failed election.     

Constitutional reform and new patterns of electoral violence: evidence from Kenya’s 2013 elections

In places prone to electoral violence, what effects can constitutional changes have on elites’ incentives to organise conflict? This article develops two hypotheses to address the above question. It proposes that in places where national reforms find sub-national resonance, national and local politicians’ incentives regarding the electoral utility of conflict will align. However, in places where national-level changes fail to be locally relevant, these incentives will deviate from one another. The research illustrates these logics through a controlled comparison of two Kenyan counties: one that experienced electoral violence and the other that maintained peace around the 2013 elections.     

The enduring influence of electoral systems: investigating Green parties’ attention to local issues in parliament

Scholars argue that members of parliament (MPs) in first-past-the-post (FPTP) systems have stronger incentives to cater to their electoral district than those in proportional representation (PR) types. Yet, few studies have explored whether MPs in PR systems or MPs from small parties engage local issues in general. I build new theory and explore its support through a case study that compares Green party behaviour in an FPTP system (the UK) to a PR system (New Zealand). Results show that MPs focus on local issues in both systems, but the distribution of attention varies in ways consistent with differing electoral incentives.     

Ideology,party systems and corruption voting in European democracies

What is the impact of corruption on citizens' voting behavior? There is a growing literature on an increasingly ubiquitous puzzle in many democratic countries: that corrupt officials continue to be re-elected by voters. In this study we address this issue with a novel theory and newly collected original survey data for 24 European countries. The crux of the argument is that voters' ideology is a salient factor in explaining why citizens would continue voting for their preferred party despite the fact that it has been involved in a corruption scandal. Developing a theory of supply (number of effective parties) and demand (voters must have acceptable ideological alternatives to their preferred party), we posit that there is a U-shaped relationship between the likelihood of corruption voting and where voters place themselves on the left/right spectrum. The further to the fringes, the more likely the voters are to neglect corruption charges and continue to support their party. However, as the number of viable party alternatives increases, the effect of ideology is expected to play a smaller role. In systems with a large number of effective parties, the curve is expected to be flat, as the likelihood that the fringe voters also have a clean and reasonably ideologically close alternative to switch to. The hypothesis implies a cross level interaction for which we find strong and robust empirical evidence using hierarchical modeling. In addition, we provide empirical insights about how individual level ideology and country level party systems – among other factors – impact a voter's decision to switch parties or stay home in the face of their party being involved in a corruption scandal.     

Economic globalisation,the perceived room to manoeuvre of national governments,and electoral participation: Evidence from the 2001 British General Election

Recent macro-level research argues that economic globalisation negatively affects electoral turnout by constraining the leeway of national governments and thereby rendering elections less meaningful to voters. This article analyses the link between perceptions of the national government's room to manoeuvre and turnout on the individual level. Drawing on the 2001 British General Election, it is shown that citizens who believe that economic globalisation leaves the national government with less influence on the economy are less likely to report to have voted. Further findings also support the proposed theoretical model according to which room to manoeuvre perceptions affect turnout via views on the importance of elections and matter specifically for citizens that tend towards the left side of the left-right scale.     

Presidential coattails and electoral coordination in multilevel elections: Comparative lessons from Brazil

This article seeks to understand how concurrent presidential and gubernatorial elections in strong federal systems affect electoral coordination and coattails voting between national and subnational levels of government. We seek to determine whether the nationalizing effect of presidential elections can overcome the strong incentives for regionalization that can arise in federal systems. We use individual-level survey data and time-series cross-sectional electoral data from Brazil, a federal country with decentralized electoral institutions that has recently adopted concurrent presidential and gubernatorial elections. We find that the congruence between national and subnational elections increases when elections are temporally proximate and the effective number of presidential candidates is low. In short, the coattails effect can not only operate “horizontally,” by shaping national legislative elections, but also “vertically,” by shaping subnational elections.     

Candidate status, presidential approval, and voting for US senator

This research tests whether the effects of assessments of presidential performance on the senate voting decision are largest for out-party incumbents and smaller for out-party incumbents and candidates in open-seat contests, a pattern suggested by the restricted in-party culpability thesis. Analysis of data from the 1988–1990–1992 Pooled Senate Election Study reveals that the effects of appraisals of presidential performance are greatest in open-seat contests and those with in-party incumbents, contrary to the restricted in-party culpability thesis. For incumbents of the out-party and candidates in open-seat contests, the effects of assessments of presidential performance are principally a function of the competitiveness of the contest. Assessments of presidential performance shape the voting decision in contests with in-party incumbents regardless of the level of electoral competitiveness.