This study evaluates the extent of party-system extremism in thirty-one electoral democracies as a function of electoral-system proportionality. It uses data from the Comparative Studies of Electoral ...Systems project to estimate the extent of party-system compactness or dispersion across polities and to determine whether more proportional systems foster greater ideological divergence among parties. Electoral system characteristics most associated with party-system compactness in the ideological space are investigated. The empirics show that more proportional systems support greater ideological dispersion, while less proportional systems encourage parties to cluster nearer the centre of the electoral space. This finding is maintained in several sub-samples of national elections and does not depend on the inclusion of highly majoritarian systems (such as the United Kingdom).
This study assesses whether gender-based differences in political knowledge primarily result from differences in observable attributes or from differences in returns for otherwise equivalent ...characteristics. It applies a statistical decomposition methodology to data obtained from the 1992-2004 American National Election Studies. There is a consistent 10-point gender gap in measured political knowledge, of which approximately one-third is due to gender-based differences in the characteristics that predict political knowledge, with the remaining two-thirds due to male-female differences in the returns to these characteristics. The methodology identifies the relative contribution of the predictors of political knowledge to each portion of the gap, and then uses this information to elucidate the underlying sources of the political knowledge gender gap and its prognosis. Education is the characteristic that most clearly enlarges the gap, with men receiving significantly larger returns to political knowledge from education than women. Group membership reduces the gap as women obtain gains in political knowledge from belonging to organizations that do not accrue to men. However, these gains are not sufficient to significantly reduce the gap.
Several recent studies of voter choice in multiparty elections point to the advantages of multinomial probit (MNP) relative to multinomial/conditional logit (MNL). We compare the MNP and MNL models ...and argue that the simpler logit is often preferable to the more complex probit for the study of voter choice in multi-party elections. Our argument rests on three areas of comparison between MNP and MNL. First, within the limits of typical data—a small sample of revealed voter choices among a few candidates or parties—neither model will clearly appear to have generated the observed data. Second, MNP is susceptible to a number of estimation problems, the most serious of which is that the MNP is often weakly identified in application. Weak identification is difficult to diagnose and may lead to plausible, yet arbitrary or misleading inferences. Finally, the logit model is criticized because it imposes the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) property on voter choice. For most applications the IIA property is neither relevant nor particularly restrictive. We illustrate our arguments using data from recent US and French presidential elections.
Political scientists have long accepted the “party eras” delineation of American political history. In this, the first party era (1789–1824) is characterized as a proto-democratic period lacking the ...party development and mass electoral engagement necessary to produce recognizably modern electoral democracy. This study uses newly available constituency-level House of Representatives election returns from the Middle Atlantic region to challenge this characterization. These data permit detailed study of voter turnout, the party vote and evidence of partisanship, geographic patterns of party support, and the effect of election rules on party ability to elect representatives. Interpreted in light of recent historical scholarship and received theories of party emergence, the returns show a more developed, party-centric, and competitive electoral politics than previously recognized.
This study estimates spatial representations of recent elections in Canada, France, The Netherlands and Israel. Its purpose is to test whether there exist systematic differences in the extent of ...spatial dispersion among parties and candidates in the majoritarian and proportional electoral systems. Canada and France are majoritarian systems, while The Netherlands and Israel are highly proportional. The study uses a measure of central tendency developed by
Kollman et al. (1992, 1993, 1998) Kollman, K., Miller, J.H., Page, S.E., 1992. Adaptive parties in spatial elections. American Political Science Review, 86, 929–937; 1993. Adaptive parties and spatial voting theory. In: Grofman, B. (Ed.), Information, Participation & Choice. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, pp. 161–173; 1998. Political parties and electoral landscapes. British Journal of Political Science, 28, 139–158 and non-parametric statistical tests to compare the relative dispersion of parties and candidates across the maps. The analysis reveals that parties and candidates in the majoritarian systems are located significantly closer to the center of the distribution of voters than those in proportional systems. The estimated spatial maps also provide information useful for interpreting the bases of electoral politics in each country.
This study estimates an individual-level model of turnout and vote choice in United States presidential elections. Extending a methodology proposed by Bartels (
1996
), the model allows one to assess ...whether the electoral choices of citizens would change if they were more knowledgeable about politics, and if such changes have implications for aggregate election results. Simulations of hypothetical electorates under different assumptions about the distribution of political knowledge show that while some citizens would change their votes if more knowledgeable, the primary effects of increasing voter knowledge is to raise turnout levels and to solidify preexisting vote tendencies. The few vote changes that result from increased political knowledge largely average out in aggregation. Increased turnout resulting from a more informed electorate, however, favors Democratic candidates in two of the four studied elections.
A people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
1
-James Madison
Several recent studies suggest that voters may prefer candidates who propose policies that are similar to, but more extreme than, the voters’ sincere policy preferences. This may arise either because ...voters vote directionally based on the direction and intensity of candidates’ proposals or, alternatively, because voters recognize that elected officials face obstacles to implementing their policy agenda and therefore discount the candidates’ policy promises. Using data from the Pooled Senate Election Study, we evaluate the discounting/directional hypothesis versus the alternative proximity hypothesis, by conducting individual-level and aggregate-level analyses of voting in 95 Senate races held in 1988–90–92. Our results support the discounting/directional hypothesis, that voters reward candidates when they present distinctly noncentrist positions on the side of the issue (liberal or conservative) favored by their constituency. These findings have important implications for understanding voting behavior, policy representation, and candidate strategies in Senate elections.
Several recent studies examine the degree to which congressional behavior affects candidates' electoral fortunes (e.g., Carson, 2005). Research examining electoral competitiveness (Bond, Campbell, & ...Cottrill, 2001; Koetzle, 1998) and roll call voting (Bailey & Brady, 1998; Jones, 2003) finds that diversity in the electorate mediates the impact of numerous variables upon election outcomes and representation. However, the influence of diversity on other modes of representation - such as the policy positions taken by Senate candidates-remains unexplored. We investigate the link between representation and Senate candidates' policy positions and thereby examine the degree to which voter diversity affects candidates' policy responsiveness. We find that diversity significantly influences responsiveness, both directly and indirectly - candidates in homogenous states are more responsive to constituents than are candidates in heterogeneous states.
This study uses empirical spatial theory to evaluate candidate and voter behavior in senate elections contested during the 1989 Chilean general election. The study evaluates whether senatorial ...candidates competing in dual member districts under Chilean d'Hondt locate near the periphery or interior of the electoral space. Spatial analyses demonstrate the Chilean senatorial electoral system is characterized by centrifugal forces. In particular, candidates of the right locate on the periphery of the space and face few incentives to pursue moderate electoral strategies. The study also characterizes bases of party and candidate support and the underlying dimensions of political competition. Spatial analysis reveals both change and continuity in the pre-and post-authoritarian electoral universes.
This note evaluates relative ability of the proximity and recently proposed directional variants of the spatial model of voter choice to account for candidate evaluations in US presidential elections ...contested between 1980 and 1992. I do this by estimating a statistical model that represents voter preference for a candidate as a weighted average of proximity and directional components. The analysis corroborates previous studies supporting the directional model, but illustrate that these results are sensitive to statistical specification. Alternative methodological specifications favor a mixed directional-proximity model and the traditional distance representation.
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