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.     

Opposition Coordination in Singapore’s 2015 General Elections

Abstract

Recent political science scholarship suggests that when opposition political parties are able to coalesce into a united coalition against an authoritarian regime, they will perform better in authoritarian elections, and can more credibly bargain with the regime for liberalising reforms. Yet, most of this literature pays little attention to the variety of ways in which opposition parties cooperate with each other. Drawing on the literature on the bargaining model of war, the author sketches out a theoretical framework to explain how opposition parties coordinate to develop non-competition agreements. Such agreements entail opposition parties bargaining over which political party should contest or withdraw in which constituencies to ensure straight fights against the dominant authoritarian incumbent in each electoral district. The author then applies this framework to explain opposition coordination in Singapore’s 2015 general elections, focusing on the conflict between the Workers’ Party and the National Solidarity Party.     

Singapore’s 2015 General Election: Explaining PAP’s Resounding Win

Abstract

While Singapore’s 15th general election came about as expected, the ensuing results did not. In view of the opposition’s performance in the 2011 general election and the general sense that the ruling party had done well despite its performance being anything but sterling, the results were somewhat shocking. Even the leaders of the ruling party were caught by surprise at the party’s ability to garner 70% of the valid votes, 10% more than in the previous election. While many factors played a role, it was the opposition parties that lost the election rather than the ruling party that won it. Most of the opposition parties were rejected by the voters on grounds of not being worthy of support. The leading opposition party, the Workers’ Party, also suffered as many voters feared that it might perform too well to the detriment of the ruling party. In the end, the 2015 general elections strengthened the one-party-dominant state in Singapore and the quest for greater political representation was placed on the back burner.     

The Impact of Peace Journalism Training on Journalists’ Reportage of the 2015 Elections in Nigeria: An Action Research Case Study

During the run-up to the 2015 general elections in nigeria, there was widespread trepidation within and outside the nation that the increasing cases of electoral violence and political intimidation ravaging the country would snowball into full-blown violence, and possibly plunge it into civil war. this fear was largely instigated by the 2011 election, which was marred by pre- and post-election violence. Human rights Watch (2011) estimated that the violence led to over 800 deaths in three days of rioting which engulfed parts of northern nigeria. since the First republic elections in the early 1960s, the nigerian media have been very involved in the political process. the diverse nature of the media makes its ideological inclination easy to decipher, because of reportage that is often tilted along ethnic and religious lines. using data obtained through participatory action research involving 40 purposively selected participant journalists, this article proposes an alternative method of news reportage using the peace-journalism model. developed by lynch and mcGoldrick (2005), the model encourages journalists to report social issues in ways that create opportunities for society to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict, using insights from conflict analysis and transformation to update concepts of balance, fairness and accuracy in reporting. it also provides a new route map which traces the connections between journalists, their sources, the stories they cover and the consequences of their reportage.     

Horizontal accountability and the challenges for democratic consolidation in Africa: evidence from Liberia

Why are most African emerging democracies failing to consolidate and reach the two-turnover test? Most scholars attribute this to the poor quality of elections and limited institutionalization of vertical accountability, overlooking some important variables. This article challenges this conception both theoretically and empirically by focusing on the quality of horizontal accountability illustrated by observations of comparative interest in Liberia's emerging democracy. Since the end of Liberia's bloody civil war in 2003, two successive and successful democratic elections (2005 and 2011) have been organized, putting Liberia on the path towards democratic consolidation. When analysing the electoral mechanism of vertical2016 accountability, many scholars have been enthusiastic about the prospects of democratic consolidation in Liberia, most of them neglecting the horizontal accountability processes that are also crucial for the quality and durability of democracy. This article analyses the processes and challenges of democratic consolidation in Liberia by focusing on key institutions of horizontal accountability. It argues that although the country has made some progress towards democratization since 2005, the domination and centralization of executive power, weak and dependent institutions of horizontal accountability (legislature, judiciary, national elections commission, general auditing commission, and anti-corruption commission) are major challenges to the consolidation of democracy. These findings have important implications for our understanding of horizontal accountability and democratic consolidation in African emerging democracies.     

Social networks and mass media as mobilizers and demobilizers: A study of turnout at a German local election

This paper explores the impact of informal communication in voters’ social networks and the formal communication of the mass media on individuals’ propensity to take part in elections. Analyzing survey data from a recent local election in Germany it shows how both forms of communication may not only mobilize, but also demobilize voters. On the whole, personal communication appears more influential than mass communication. The media’s effects are generally weaker than those of social networks. Moreover, they are mediated by attitudes, while social networks have strong direct effects. These originate mainly from information conveyed through personal contact with voters and abstainers in one’s immediate social environment. Social voting norms are only influential, if they originate from persons’ families and are in favor of electoral participation.     

INDONESIA’S 2019 ELECTIONS: A FRACTURED DEMOCRACY?

In April 2019, Indonesia carried out simultaneous presidential and legislative elections. With an estimated 192 million voters acceding to 800,000 polling stations, this was the world's largest direct presidential election. Barring some dispersed claims of irregularities, the mammoth task of electing public representatives at the national as well as provincial and local levels was successfully carried out. Indonesia's voters had to decide on the 575 members of the national parliament, as well as some 20,000 seats in the country's many provincial and local legislatures, including 2,207 provincial level MPs from 34 provinces and 17,610 local councillors from more than 500 local authorities. Voter turn-out was an estimated 81.9 percent, the highest yet since Indonesia's transition to full democracy. Thus, at first blush, this electoral exercise can be seen as a logistical and political achievement, and an addition to Indonesia's track record of successfully-held elections. Yet, despite its technical proficiency and solid participation, the 2019 polls highlight pervasive societal and geographic fault-lines and raise questions about the strength of Indonesia's democratic institutions.

In order to analyse the importance of these elections, this article is comprised of six parts. Following this introduction, the second section briefly discusses the salient aspects of Jokowi's first administration. The subsequent part sets out the run-up to the presidential campaign, paying particular importance to changes in ‘rules of the game’ that altered the structural dynamics of the elections. The fourth section compares and contrasts the campaigns of the two opposing coalitions and the fifth analyses the electoral results. The final section concludes by discussing the denouement of the elections before looking forward.     

Has Television Personalized Voting Behavior?

Scholars and political observers have suggested that television has “personalized” voting behavior in American presidential elections by encouraging citizens to cast ballots on the basis of candidate image and personality. Though an oft-heard assertion, little solid evidence exists that this is true, and the reinvigoration of partisanship and the persistence of ideological conflict suggest personalization may be less pervasive than supposed. In this paper, I use National Election Studies data to examine whether voters are more concerned with candidates’ personal characteristics now than they were at the outset of the television era. I find, however, that voters are no more likely today to mention candidate personality as a reason for their vote choice than they were in the 1950s and 1960s. Moreover, while personality affects voting behavior, its influence on candidate choice is not significantly larger than it was a half-century ago. The results are not contingent on exposure to television or political awareness and are insensitive to different measures of perceptions of candidate image. The findings are consistent with the resurgence of partisan voting in American elections and suggest that some concerns about TV’s effects on political judgment are exaggerated.