One of the classic explanations of variation in voter turnout states that, all else being equal, the closer (the more competitive) the election in question the higher the respective turnout rate ...should be. In this paper, I examine whether this proposition holds in the context of the city president elections in Poland. I employ two different measures of election closeness to account for the substantive difference between the first and the second rounds of these elections. The results I present indicate that, while the effect of closeness on turnout in the first rounds of the 2002 and 2006 elections was moderately strong or even weak (and insignificant), the regularities observed in the second rounds lend arguably strong support to the closeness hypothesis.
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In this paper, I examine the patterns of economic voting in 2002 and 2006 city president elections in largest Polish cities. I draw on the conceptual distinction between "conventional" and ..."transitional" economic voting. While the former concept stresses a general positive link between economic welfare and the results gained by incumbents, the latter, developed in course of studies on the post-communist countries, emphasises a negative relationship between welfare and the electoral fortunes of post-communist parties and candidates. Relying on aggregate-level data relating to 2002 and 2006 city president elections, I conduct analyses suggesting that both types of economic voting can be observed at the local level in Poland. On one hand, the electoral achievements of incumbents in the cities with high average wages tend to be greater than in the case of the cities with low average wages. On the other, low average level of wages favours presidential candidates affiliated with the post-communist party. Moreover, there is suggestive evidence that incumbency status interacts with affiliation with the post-communist party. The results tend to be robust with respect to different model specifications, including those accounting for unobserved heterogeneity.
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BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK
One of the classic explanations of variation in voter turnout states that, all else being equal, the closer (the more competitive) the election in question the higher the respective turnout rate ...should be. In this paper, I examine whether this proposition holds in the context of the city president elections in Poland. I employ two different measures of election closeness to account for the substantive difference between the first and the second rounds of these elections. The results I present indicate that, while the effect of closeness on turnout in the first rounds of the 2002 and 2006 elections was moderately strong or even weak (and insignificant), the regularities observed in the second rounds lend arguably strong support to the closeness hypothesis.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK
In this paper, I examine the patterns of economic voting in 2002 and 2006 city president elections in largest Polish cities. I draw on the conceptual distinction between "conventional" and ..."transitional" economic voting. While the former concept stresses a general positive link between economic welfare and the results gained by incumbents, the latter, developed in course of studies on the post-communist countries, emphasises a negative relationship between welfare and the electoral fortunes of post-communist parties and candidates. Relying on aggregate-level data relating to 2002 and 2006 city president elections, I conduct analyses suggesting that both types of economic voting can be observed at the local level in Poland. On one hand, the electoral achievements of incumbents in the cities with high average wages tend to be greater than in the case of the cities with low average wages. On the other, low average level of wages favours presidential candidates affiliated with the post-communist party. Moreover, there is suggestive evidence that incumbency status interacts with affiliation with the post-communist party. The results tend to be robust with respect to different model specifications, including those accounting for unobserved heterogeneity. Adapted from the source document.
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Large proportions of spoilt ballots may lead to a distortion of election results. While invalid votes are sometimes meaningful political acts, reflecting political protest, spoilt ballot papers may ...also be a consequence of voter error, which can be attributed to the poor design of a ballot paper. In this study, we focus on the widely publicized case of the Polish local elections of 2014. These elections saw unprecedentedly large proportions of spoilt votes, and ballot paper format was often mentioned as a potential culprit. Yet it remains largely unclear whether or not there indeed does exist a cause-and-effect relationship between ballot card format and the tendency of voters to cast invalid votes. We argue that what we deliver here is the first methodologically refined test of the aforementioned hypothesis. We apply the generalized synthetic control comparative method, proposed by Yiquing Xu (in 2017), and show that the implementation of a complex or ambiguous ballot design can result in a substantial increase in the rate of spoilt votes. We thus demonstrate that ballot paper design matters. Specifically, the results of this study corroborate the existence of a cause-and-effect relationship between ballot paper format and the fraction of invalid votes in the 2014 municipal elections in Poland.
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In this paper, I examine the patterns of economic voting in 2002 and 2006 city president elections in largest Polish cities. I draw on the conceptual distinction between "conventional" and ..."transitional" economic voting. While the former concept stresses a general positive link between economic welfare and the results gained by incumbents, the latter, developed in course of studies on the post-communist countries, emphasises a negative relationship between welfare and the electoral fortunes of post-communist parties and candidates. Relying on aggregate-level data relating to 2002 and 2006 city president elections, I conduct analyses suggesting that both types of economic voting can be observed at the local level in Poland. On one hand, the electoral achievements of incumbents in the cities with high average wages tend to be greater than in the case of the cities with low average wages. On the other, low average level of wages favours presidential candidates affiliated with the post-communist party. Moreover, there is suggestive evidence that incumbency status interacts with affiliation with the post-communist party. The results tend to be robust with respect to different model specifications, including those accounting for unobserved heterogeneity.
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BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK
