District Voter Turnout and Dyadic Representation in Congress

One of the most important tools by which citizens can influence their elected officials' behavior is through voting—the electoral connection. Previous studies demonstrate that the opinions of voters are better represented than the opinions of nonvoters within an electoral jurisdiction, but we do not know whether jurisdictions with higher levels of aggregate voter turnout are better represented by their elected officials compared to those with lower levels of turnout. Using data compiled across five congressional sessions (2003–2013), this article investigates whether congressional districts with higher voter turnout are better represented by their member of Congress (MC). We find evidence that district voter turnout positively conditions the relationship between district opinion and MC voting behavior even after accounting for the possible effects of electoral competition and district income and racial demographics. In addition, we uncover evidence that partisan differences exist in this conditioning effect such that higher voter turnout enhances roll call voting responsiveness among Democratic MCs but not among Republican MCs. These findings suggest that congressional districts as a whole benefit from a political responsiveness standpoint when more of their constituents turn out to vote and contribute to literatures on political representation, political participation, democratic accountability, and the U.S. Congress.     

Sources of electoral support for the Australian democrats in the house of representatives and Senate elections of 1990 and 1993: A comparative analysis

Election to the Australian Senate under proportional voting and statewide quotas gives to minor parties of the political centre a chance to win parliamentary representation otherwise denied them in the single member constituency‐based House of Representatives. Focusing on the Australian Democrats, vote splitting in the context of ? consistently higher levels of support for the Democrats in the upper house provides some evidence of differences among sources of electoral support between House and Senate, but within a context of general similarity of voter behaviour. Findings support a view that, as a party of ‘concerns’ rather than ideology, with a highly unstable support base, the future of the Democrats as other than a focus for protest must remain in doubt.     

Split parties finish last: Preferences,pluralities and the 1957 Queensland election

The 1957 election is a watershed in Queensland politics. Coming after the Labor split, the election saw the end of over 40 years of almost uninterrupted Labor rule in Queensland. Often overlooked in discussions of this key period is that the 1957 election was conducted under plurality rule, or as it is more commonly known, ‘first‐past‐the‐post’. Had the 1957 election been held under preferential voting, preferences would have been distributed in 46 of the 71 contested seats. Through simulations of distributions of hypothetical second preferences I assess the effects of the Labor split on the fates of the respective parties. Contrary to some interpretations of the 1957 election I find that plurality rule saved Labor from even greater electoral losses than those they would have sustained under preferential voting. Single‐member constituency electoral systems deal harsh punishment to small parties, or, as in 1957, split parties: a point well known by astute political leaders. Preferential voting may have given Labor leaders even more powerful incentives to heal the split of 1957, and perhaps even avoid it in the first place.     

The legal (de)construction of geography: race and political community in supreme court redistricting decisions

This article examines the different conceptions of racial identity and ‘geography’ in two landmark Supreme Court decisions, Shaw v. Reno (1993) and Easley v. Cromartie (2001). Both decisions evaluated similar Congressional redistricting plans in North Carolina, but reached opposite conclusions. In Reno, the Court based its reasoning on the ‘objective’, ‘natural’ and ‘rational’ geography of North Carolina. Such geographic relationships create political communities and constrain the way in which state legislatures can draw electoral districts. In contrast, the Easley decision based its reasoning on voting behaviour, and makes an implicit appeal to deliberative democratic principles. From this perspective, political relationships create the geographic relationships defined by Congressional district boundaries. Where the Reno decision treats race as an arbitrary social distinction that the state should not use as the basis of political representation, the Easley opinion argues that the state can consider differences in racial voting behaviour during the redistricting process. More fundamentally, the Easley decision implies that racial identity is formed by deliberative political communities, rather than being an objective, static characteristic. This suggests that disputes over spatial relationships are critical to the construction of hegemonic racial identities, and that space is fundamental to the conception of racial difference.     

Race-based districting: does it help or hinder legislative representation?

This paper assesses the impact of using race-based districts on membership diversity of the US Congress and state legislative chambers as well as on electoral competition and voter participation in US Congressional and state legislative elections. In the 1990s membership diversity has increased in the US House of Representatives and state legislative chambers due to increased reliance on the use of race and ethnicity in drawing Congressional and legislative districts. But anecdotal evidence suggests that the creation of more homogeneous districts may lead to a decline in electoral competition, and thus a decline in voter participation in elections held within those districts. Uncompetitive Congressional or state legislative districts are posited to reduce the incentives for candidates or parties to mobilize voters and to restrict the electorate to habitual voters only. A lack of incentives to vote in district elections may diminish overall participation and have consequences in elections for statewide offices. I examine electoral competition and voter participation in recent Congressional and state legislative elections to determine whether electoral competition and voter participation have decreased, and whether that decrease can be linked to changes in the homogeneity of districts. I conclude by suggesting that bodies who adopt districting plans as well as those charged with a review of such plans take into account how line drawing affects electoral competition and voter participation as well as membership diversity.     

The global spread of preferential voting: Australian institutional imperialism?

In recent years, a number of countries have adopted versions of the ‘Australian’ electoral system of preferential voting for both national and sub‐national elections. This article examines the diffusion of preferential voting systems around the world. It distinguishes between various types of preferential voting manifested in both majoritarian (eg alternative vote) and proportional (eg single transferable vote) contexts. It then examines the empirical record of the adoption of preferential voting in Europe, North America and the Pacific, identifying three ways in which the ‘Australian’ system has been transferred to other countries, via colonial transplanting, international imitation, and normative appeal. While the first two approaches have been traditionally influential, in recent years the normative appeal of preferential voting systems has become paramount. This is in part because of the globalisation of electoral assistance, which has provided an important opportunity for the diffusion of what have been, until recently, distinctively ‘Australian’ electoral procedures.     

Party Democracy: An Audit of Australian Parties

Competition between candidates representing political parties is usually regarded as a central feature of a liberal democracy. However, where competition between parties fails to provide the public with an effective choice of candidates, the real competition between candidates is displaced to a competition for party endorsement within particular parties. The paper examines the democratic implications of this displacement, and reports the findings of an audit of candidate-selection procedures within the principal Australian parties. The paper argues inter alia that the closed nature of electoral competition and the public status of Australian political parties imply that their internal affairs should be conducted democratically. The paper defines internal party democracy in structural and procedural terms. It applies realistic standards - realistic, because too much internal democracy could render a party ineffective and restrict electoral competition - in conducting an audit of the candidate-selection rules and the composition of candidate-selection voting panels for the principal Australian parties. The paper concludes with a suggestion for policy reform.     

Multi‐member electorates and the development of Australian party politics

Australian political scientists have paid little attention to voting in multi‐member electorates apart from the working of Proportional Representation in Tasmania and the Senate. Yet the existence of such electorates and the methods of voting therein probably helped Labor parties gain their first representation in the colonial parliaments.

The strength of their organisations meant that those parties often fared well in the state‐wide electorates for the Senate after federation. From 1902 the prohibition of plumping in Senate elections fostered ticket voting. It not only introduced the first coercive element into the electoral system, but, by establishing a ‘winner‐take‐all’ method of voting, encouraged a two‐party system at federal level.     

STRATEGIES OF SINGLE-ISSUE INTEREST GROUPS

Using traditional models of electoral behavior one would not expect single-issue interest groups to have the impact on the American electoral system evident in recent elections. The difficulty in understanding their success lies in the assumption that the rational voter merely maximizes utility by choosing between the positions offered by the candidates/ political parties. Single-issue interest group activity has demonstrated, to the contrary, that it is possible for an assertive rational voter to successfully force candidates/ parties to take specific positions on issues and to form winning coalitions.     

Western Australian electoral reforms: Labor finally succeeds

Australian electoral systems have a history of malapportionment, designed to give added voting weight to rural and remote areas. However, by 2000, all Australian jurisdictions except Western Australia had adopted voting equality within specified tolerances. This paper provides a brief analysis of the Gallop Labor government's efforts to reform the Western Australian system, drawing primarily on interviews with key players involved in the debates, including parliamentary members of the political parties involved. Quotations in this paper are drawn from these interviews, which were conducted in August 2004.     

Italy's political system since 1989

This essay follows the development of the Italian political system over the last twenty-five years, starting from the collapse of the principal political parties that had previously dominated the history of the Republic. In institutional terms, it seems legitimate to describe this as a transition, since the outcomes of initiatives to reform the electoral system, to abolish the previous system of ‘perfect bicameralism’, and reshape relations between the State and the regions are still unknown. But I argue that many fundamental changes in the relationship between the country and its political system were already evident in the 1980s.     

The Trouble-maker's Ballot Box? A Note on the Evolving Role of the Australian Federal By-election

By-elections have the capacity to result in political outcomes beyond simply filling casual vacancies when they arise. This paper examines data pertaining to federal by-elections in Australia since 1949 in order to ascertain the extent to which there have been changes in these special electoral contests. This paper argues that, although the rate of representational change has not been great in federal by-elections, there has nonetheless been an evolving notion that these contests give non-major party candidates greater scope to influence the political debate. However, it is also argued that this enhanced scope for non-major party 'trouble-making' has been the product of an emerging feature in Australian by-elections-specifically, the increasing incidence of strategic absenteeism by the major political parties.     

Local voting at local elections revisited: ‘Friends and neighbors voting’ at mayoral elections in rural Poland

Voters' tendency to support local candidates, often referred to as ‘friends and neighbors voting’, is a spatial-political phenomenon studied for over 70 years. The last decade has seen a revival of interest in this issue. Relevant studies typically focus on large-scale national electoral contests, such as national parliamentary elections. The research efforts targeting local elections are, by contrast, scarce, in most cases dating back to the 1970s. In this article, we address this relative gap in the electoral geography literature and study ‘friends and neighbors voting’ at the most recent set of mayoral elections in Poland, held in 2018. Based on a rich dataset, covering elections in over 700 rural municipalities, we demonstrate strong local candidate effects in both voter choice and voter turnout. The results point to the potential relevance of both geographic distance and a place (locality) attachment; voters tend to prefer candidates living close to them and candidates enjoy an additional surplus of votes in their home localities. Our results also tend to echo the sparse previous findings emphasizing the possibility that the presence of a local candidate boosts voter turnout in a given area. While the limitations of our data do not allow unequivocal conclusions about the exact mechanisms driving the aforementioned effects, we put forward a number of plausible, grounded conjectures as to how such effects may operate.     

The Impact of Proportional Representation on Turnout: Evidence from New Zealand

Theories of voter turnout assume that institutional arrangements can alter incentives for participation. Countries with proportional representation (PR) are assumed to increase the incentives to participate because they reduce the proportion of votes that are wasted, giving voters a stronger incentive to participate and parties a stronger incentive to mobilise voters. This paper departs from previous cross-national studies by employing individual-level data during a transition between electoral systems in one country. We used survey data collected before and after electoral reform in New Zealand to examine patterns of participation among political minorities. As a direct test of individual change, the analysis was supplemented with survey data from the last election held under first past the post (FPP) merged with validated participation data from the following election held under PR. We found that the adoption of PR in New Zealand has succeeded initially in fostering more positive attitudes about the efficacy of voting. In New Zealand's first election held under PR, voters who were on the extreme left were significantly more likely to participate than previously, leading to an overall increase in turnout.     

Constituency interests without constituencies:: the geographical impact of candidate selection on party organization and legislative behavior in the 14th Israeli Knesset, 1996–99

The Israeli political system has recently undergone dramatic and significant structural changes, including the introduction of a new method of candidate selection known as primaries. This article focuses on this new method of candidate selection, which drastically reshaped the connection between the parties and their members, their voters and their representatives, and as a result completely undermined the organizational infrastructure of the parties that adopted primaries. This article describes the reforms that were enacted, assesses their ramifications and focuses on the geographical significance of the innovative aspect of constituency representation by individual parliamentarians, which the primaries injected into the unitary political parties, electoral system and political infrastructure in Israel during the 14th Knesset, 1996–99. In doing so, this article points to a lacuna in the political science literature concerning the relevance and consequences of candidate selection—i.e. intra-party elections—on political geography. The article argues that intra-party electoral reform is not only significant, but, from a political geography perspective, can prove to be as meaningful and consequential as systemic electoral reform.     

Voter migration as a source of electoral change in the Rocky Mountain West

Examining county-level voting patterns since 1992, this paper describes the rising strength of the Democratic Party in the Rocky Mountain West and explores domestic migration (voter mobility) as a cause of the electoral change. Other theories of electoral change (voter conversion, voter mobilization and generational replacement) are analyzed and found less significant than a voter migration theory. A spatial autoregressive model also presents evidence of significant contextual “neighborhood effects” contributing to electoral change in the region. Relying on IRS tax-filer migration data, Census data and voting results for all Western counties since 1992, this work finds a significant correlation between growing Democratic strength and in-migration of new voters who generally hail from more Democratic environments than the Western counties into which they are emigrating. The strongest correlations emerge in counties where the share of creative class occupations is also growing quickly. Migrating voters are building a new Western community – a community of creative classes, childless households and urban professionals who are more likely to vote Democrat than the rural conservatives they are increasingly outnumbering.     

Interest aggregators,not office chasers: evidence for party convergence and divergence in Australia

This paper examines whether Australia’s major political parties continue to fulfil a representational role. This was often the traditional view of the parties, but has been much criticised in recent decades by scholars arguing they have largely converged, moderating their policies and abandoning their links with civil society. Here I outline a theoretical framework – supported with evidence from four empirical tests – that characterises the major parties as interest aggregators representing electoral alliances made up of politicians, activists, financial contributors and voters, united by key economic policy goals. These actors create a centrifugal force, pushing party policies away from each other in salient areas. Using this framework, I theorise that the parties matter for policy outcomes, building on the assumption that cleavages in the social structure are reflected in the political system, with policy implementation the result of the competing demands and interests of the parties’ constituencies.     

Party responsiveness and voter confidence in Australia

Numerous studies have shown that Australians have little confidence in their political parties. This article presents the results of a study investigating whether the responsiveness of Australian parties to what their voters want drives this lack of confidence. It analyses two aspects of party responsiveness: programmatic responsiveness in electoral manifestos and perceived responsiveness that centres on Australian voters’ assessment of how well their parties meet their demands. The analysis finds that programmatic responsiveness has no significant influence. Instead, how Australians perceive their parties to be responsive has a modest effect on their confidence in those parties. The study suggests that, however, it is incumbency which has the most powerful effect on voter confidence.     

The Dimensions of Politics and Voter Behaviour in Preferential Systems: The Case of Australia

This project examines the dimensions of politics and voter preferences in Australia. Evidence from an empirical spatial analysis provides that Australian parties and voters are organised along a unidimensional socioeconomic continuum. Numerous individual-level factors, including party identification, ideology and a host of demographic and opinion variables, predict voters' positions along the continuum. Moreover, voter locations are shown to relate strongly to vote choice, demonstrating the importance of socioeconomic positions to voter behaviour in Australia. Finally, because this approach allows for a full examination of voter preference orderings, it is important to the study of voting behaviour and representation under preferential electoral institutions in Australia and elsewhere.     

Towards a chequebook democracy? Business,parties and the funding of politics in Italy and the United States

This article seeks to establish to what extent Silvio Berlusconi's entry into electoral politics as leader of Forza Italia signals an ‘Americanization’ of Italian politics. It argues that Italian party democracy is moving in an ‘American’ direction in two ways. First, Italian party organizations are declining, leading to a more candidate-centred type of electoral politics. Second, the decline of parties is enhancing the ability of business to use its financial clout to tailor public policy to its own requirements. However, these trends do not have identical effects in Italy and the United States. This article will also show that this process of ‘Americanization’ interacts with the existing political praxis and institutional framework of Italian politics to produce an outcome which differs from both the traditional Western European model and the American model of party democracy. It will be concluded that this outcome seriously undermines representative democracy in Italy.