The UK's electoral reform referendum of May 2011

The UK's second nationwide referendum, held in May 2011, offers rich opportunities for analysing the dynamics of a referendum campaign. The articles gathered together in this symposium address three themes. The first concerns the determinants and dynamics of public opinion during a referendum campaign, the second relates to the potential for interaction between the referendum and simultaneous elections, and the third focuses on coverage of the referendum in the media. Following a brief outline of the background to the referendum, this paper introduces the contribution that each article makes to these themes.     

Electoral and Political Changes: the Impact on Political Bureaucratic Relationships in Scottish Local Government

This paper explores a fundamental issue in public administration: the political bureaucratic relationship or political administrative interface. Much of the research and writing hitherto has been at central government level; and while important work on local government exists, relatively little exists on local government. The paper makes an important contribution to the field by researching aspects of the political administrative interface in the context of significant electoral and political changes in Scottish local government, which introduced single transferable voting and multi member wards. The research found an increase in intensity of senior bureaucrats' political management roles, a greater bureaucratisation of political and policy roles, increased scrutiny yet mixed findings about democratic processes. The approach and findings open up the research field and the paper concludes by suggesting some areas of future research potential.     

How Second Order Are Local Elections? Voting Motives and Party Preferences in Belgian Municipal Elections

A defining characteristic of second-order elections is that voters base their decision on considerations that were developed for a different policy level. Therefore, this kind of elections does not contribute to the quality of democratic representation. Municipal elections are often considered as second-order elections. In this article, we use data from an exit poll (n = 4,591) held during the 2012 municipal elections in Belgium. Results suggest that although voters predominantly invoke local aspects as determining their vote choice, still three-quarters votes for the same party locally as for federal elections. Among voters who deviate from their federal party preference, knowing local candidates and concern about local policy issues are the main sources of deviation. The conclusion therefore is that local candidates do make a difference and contribute strongly to the salience of electoral decisions on the local level.     

Forecasting the Presidential Vote in the States, 1948-2004

SUMMARY

This research updates, revises, and extends a forecasting equation of the presidential vote in the states. The original equation was composed of sixteen predictors available well before the election and estimated with data from 531 state elections from 1948 to 1988. The equation was empirically strong, based on objective predictors, and more parsimonious than previous equations. Reexamining the equation with 200 additional state elections from 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 indicates that the equation remains well supported, but suggests several opportunities for improvement. A revised equation has a mean absolute error of 3.2 percentage points and correctly predicts 87 percent of all electoral votes. The extension of the analysis adapts the forecast equation to predict electoral vote winners, conducting a logit analysis that takes into account both the size of the state and the closeness of its previous election. This produces more accurate forecasts of both electoral vote winners in the states and the division of the aggregate national electoral vote.     

论公民选举权与被选举权的平等保护——以2010年选举法修改为视角

2010年修改后的《选举法》确立了＂城乡按相同人口比例选举人大代表＂的原则,这是对我国选举制度的重要发展。但是由于户籍制度的制约以及相关配套制度的滞后和缺位,在实践中城乡人大代表同比例选举这一目标的实现仍存在障碍。针对实践中存在的相关问题,在下次修改《选举法》时,可以考虑以居住地为划分选区的唯一标准,同时可以采取＂异地选举＂的方式,将上亿流动人口纳入选举制度中来。     

The impact of candidate selection rules and electoral vulnerability on legislative behaviour in comparative perspective

Legislators are political actors whose main goal is to get re-elected. They use their legislative repertoire to help them cater to the interests of their principals. It is argued in this article that we need to move beyond treating electoral systems as monolithic entities, as if all legislators operating under the same set of macro-rules shared the same set of incentives. Rather, we need to account for within-system variation – namely, candidate selection rules and individual electoral vulnerability. Using a most different systems design, Germany, Ireland and Portugal are leveraged with both cross-system and within-system variation. An original dataset of 345,000 parliamentary questions is used. Findings show that candidate selection rules blur canonical electoral system boundaries. Electoral vulnerability has a similar effect in closed-list and mixed systems, but not in preferential voting settings.     

Partisan dealignment and committee power in five Westminster parliaments

What explains the power of parliamentary committees? A large literature on the United States Congress sees strong legislative committees as a consequence of legislators’ incentives to cultivate a personal vote. These incentives are typically understood to be determined by formal electoral rules. How legislatures are elected thus shapes how they are organised. This article argues that explanations of legislative organisation should also consider a non-institutional source of personal vote-seeking incentives: voters’ partisanship. Where partisan dealignment is more extensive, legislators have stronger incentives to develop a personal vote. Where committee systems are more powerful, legislators have better opportunities to do so. Partisan dealignment should thus lead to stronger committee systems. This argument is supported by analysis of original data on the postwar evolution of committee systems in five ‘Westminster’ parliaments. Partisan dealignment is associated with larger committee systems, and with larger expansions of committee systems.     

The religious and spiritual underpinnings of party choice in christian Europe

Many studies have shown that individual religiosity is related to a Christian Democratic vote. Recently, studies from sociology of religion have reported the rise of holistic spirituality. This paper is the first to examine the effects of holistic spirituality on party choice. In addition, it critically assesses the assertion that conventional religiosity prevents individuals from affiliating with Green parties.Our results show that spirituality is related to a higher probability of choosing Green parties. Moreover, conventional religiosity increases the probability that moderate left voters will prefer a Green party to a Social Democratic party. This result shows that there is common ground between the electorates of Green and Christian Democratic parties, thus creating possibilities for new political coalitions.     

Making wasted votes count: Turnout,transfers, and preferential voting in practice

Proponents of electoral reform champion the single transferable vote (STV) or aligned forms of preferential voting (AV, IRV, RCV) as a method to improve participation among and representation of the general public. Voters provide an ordinal ranking among alternatives on the ballot, and ballots not used to elect a candidate are transferred to another favored alternative. Preferential voting is intended to encourage both citizen participation in an election and sincere voting. Yet the empirical evidence about the effects of preferential voting in the scholarly literature is scant. Elections of members to the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of national parliament in Ireland, provide a wealth of data on preferential voting. Data from four recent Irish elections (1997, 2002, 2007, and 2011) are analyzed to assess the effectiveness of STV on reducing wasted votes. The number of nontransferable ballots, votes not used for any candidate, is large and increases as the need for lower level preferences (that is, later counts or rounds) grows. Voter turnout does not correspond to preferential voting in predictable ways; turnout declines as the number of candidates elected increases. Although preferential voting systems have much to offer, their effects need to be evaluated.     

Voting for Movement Parties in Southern Europe: The Role of Protest and Digital Information

In recent years ‘movement parties’ such as Syriza in Greece, the Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, Podemos in Spain and—to a lesser extent—Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal shook national party systems, breaking the consolidated dynamics of political competition. Despite growing interest in movement parties, there has been scant attention to the role of citizens adopting unconventional forms of action and using digital media in accounting for their electoral performance. To fill this gap, four original internet-based post-electoral surveys are employed showing that protesters and digital media users are more likely to vote for these parties, despite important country differences.