Probing the reds and blues: Sectionalism and voter location in the 2000 and 2004 U. S. presidential elections

The election outcomes of a place hinge largely on what is within its political boundaries: economic, social, cultural, and other compositional factors facing voters. Yet, it is also important to investigate geographic context, both within and between places. This study presents renewed emphasis on two geographic factors that relate to electoral outcomes while controlling for compositional attributes: sectional distinctions and population density. Within different regions of the United States and across different locations (urban, suburban, and rural residents), there exist notable differences in presidential voting. Using survey and county-level data on the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections, this study evaluates the partisan preferences of voters from a regional perspective, and from a density perspective. The findings demonstrate independent relationships between section and voting, and location and voting. A major consequence of the distinctiveness of section and location in the face of migration effects (as noted by others) is the increased spatial polarization of the electorate's political preferences in these recent presidential contests.     

Voting technologies and residual ballots in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections

The accurate counting of ballots is essential for a functional democracy. In recent elections, particularly the exceedingly narrow presidential one in 2000, widespread concerns surfaced that votes were not being counted accurately. This paper examines major voting technologies, their advantages and disadvantages, and the significance of residual ballots (overvotes and undervotes) across U.S. counties in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. In the 2000 election, 1.9 million ballots were voided, as were more than 2.3 million in 2004. The analysis explores three fundamental questions: (1) Do voting technologies tend to favor one political party over its rival? (2) Do voting technologies tend to favor one ethnic group over another? (3) Do voting technologies favor urban areas over rural ones? The empirical results consistently deny the existence of any of these biases at the national level, although the possibility of local bias remains an open question. The conclusion links these issues to the on-going debate about voting technology reform.     

Transnationalism and expatriate political engagement: the case of the Italian and French voting in Australia

The aim of this article is to provide an appreciation and analysis of the expatriate connectivity of Italian and French citizens from their place of residence in Australia through their respective elections in their home countries. Specifically, the article examines the case of Italians in Australia voting in the 2013 Italian elections and equally that of French citizens in Australia voting in the French presidential and the following legislative elections in 2017. The article examines the voting patterns there might be between those voting in their home country (Italy and France) and those voting in external electoral colleges (in this case, the relevant Australian college). The article shows that those living abroad—in this case, Australia—provide different political choices and less surprising low voting participation compared to the domestic districts. It also highlights that the transnational community can be, and is, influenced by the political context of their host country, which will be different from that which occurs in their home country.     

Postmaterialist and Economic Voting in Australia, 1990-98

Recent research in Australian sociology and political science has debated the extent to which postmaterialist values and economic self-interest shape voting in federal elections. Some researchers have argued that postmaterialist values have partly displaced materialist concerns with physical security and economic well-being in Australian public life. This displacement, coupled with the adoption by major political parties of postmaterialist 'quality of life' issues such as the environment, has meant that voting in Australia has come to be more dependent on postmaterialist values than on perceptions of economic interest. Other research, however, has found no relationship between postmaterialist values and voting behaviour, while economic evaluations remain a strong determinant of voting behaviour. Part of the disagreement reflects methodological differences in the research. But different methodological problems compromise each of the previous studies. In this paper we use data from the 1990, 1993, 1996 and 1998 Australian Election Studies to investigate postmaterialist and economic voting in the Commonwealth House of Representatives and the Senate. Using various statistical methods, we first explore bivariate relationships between key variables and then use multivariate models of postmaterialist and economic voting to adjudicate between the contending positions.     

Party registration choices as a function of the geographic distribution of partisanship: a model of `hidden partisanship' and an illustrative test

The Public Choice literature has identified conditions in which voters in multi-candidate contests would have an incentive to vote strategically rather than vote for the most preferred candidate or candidates. In the US, where party registration and party primaries play a critical role in the electoral process—especially in states with closed primaries—the existence of multiple layers of elections across constituencies can induce strategic falsification of party registration that is tied to the geographic distribution of electoral strength. Following V. O. Key, we should expect that a long history of one party dominance in local elections should encourage voters to register in the party whose elections are most determinative of electoral choices, even if that is not the party with which they most identify. However, in many states, while politics may be dominated by one party locally, there may be real two-party competition for at least some offices at the state level and for the presidency.We use a `natural experiment' to view the link between party registration and voting for president and obscure judicial offices in order to test the hypothesis that, for whichever party is the minority party in the local unit, party registration will understate the voting support in presidential or other statewide elections, where that party's candidates have a realistic chance to win. In the modern South this hypothesis can be shown to imply that the relationship between Republican party registration and vote shares for Republican candidates for president or statewide office ought to be curvilinear. To test this and other related hypotheses, we examine data on political units (e.g. counties) with considerable variation in party registration and concomitant variation in the extent of one-party dominance of local politics by looking at county level data from North Carolina for the presidential elections and obscure judicial elections in 1984 and 1996. As hypothesized, for the North Carolina data the relationship between party registration and voting can best be fit by a quadratic function, but the strength of the quadratic term is much less for the 1996 data, reflecting the increase in Republican registration and the success of local GOP candidates in the 1990s.     

Electoral Messages from the District: Explaining Presidential Support in the U.S. House of Representatives

Legislators are highly sensitive to those parts of their reelection constituencies whose support is least solid. Therefore, out-party members of Congress should be more supportive of the opposing party's president when that president enjoys greater electoral support among the legislators' reelection constituencies. This hypothesis is tested in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 1980s and 1990s. The hypothesis is supported, even with controls for the ideology of the member and the political orientation of the district. The findings suggest legislators have a sophisticated view of their districts and perceive electoral messages from the voting patterns of their constituents. The results also imply that presidential success is conditioned by the forces that operate in the congressional election context.     

Russia's Electoral Geography: A Review

A noted specialist on the electoral geography of Russia reviews the existing body of work on the subject based on national elections, beginning with the RSFSR returns from the March 1989 voting for seats in the the USSR Congress of People's Deputies and extending to the presidential race of 2004. The author identifies major themes and methodologies relevant to a discussion of the political topography of Russia, before assessing the extent to which the country's emergent electoral landscape has been described. He emphasizes the importance of scale in interpreting the spatial patterns of electoral outcomes, as well as the social and economic correlates of voting across the regions. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O10, R10. 4 figures, 84 references.     

Gender and Patterns of Roll Call Voting in the U.S. Senate

Previous studies of gender and representation at the state legislative level and in the U.S. House of Representatives have shown that women tend to be more liberal than their male colleagues and are more likely to support women's issues. Because of the limited presence of women in the body over the years, there is scant empirical evidence to confirm whether this pattern is present in the U.S. Senate. Sound theoretical basis indicates that the institutional rules of the Senate, the Senate's individualistic culture, the Senate's six-year election timetable, and the national profile of U.S. senators may create conditions that allow gender differences in roll call voting to be more easily detected than is possible in more rigidly structured institutions such as the U.S. House. This study employs a longitudinal design that pools roll call voting data from the 103rd Congress through the 110th Congress to determine whether female senators compile substantively different policy records than their male colleagues. The results indicate that gender does systematically influence roll call voting patterns in the Senate. However, it is largely a function of female Republicans voting in a less conservative fashion than male Republicans on the basic left-right policy space and on a smaller set of issues of importance to women.     

Shifting Electoral Geography in Russia's 1991 and 1996 Presidential Elections

This research note reexamines Russia's 1991 and 1996 presidential elections, focusing—unlike studies emphasizing stability of Russia's electorate—on differences in electoral geography in the two elections, with oblast-level vote totals for Boris Yel'tsin in 1991 and 1996 being only poorly correlated. Although Yel'tsin's performance in both elections was better in urban than in rural regions, the urbanrural divide in 1996 is shown to differ from that in 1991. Nonetheless, the Russian electorate is stable after 1993, regional voting patterns between 1993 and 1996 being both similar to each other and different from that in the 1991 election. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O50, Z10. 6 tables, 14 references.     

‘Two‐party preferred’: The analysis of voting figures under preferential voting

Since the Commonwealth Electoral Commission is issuing full distribution of the preferences of votes for minor candidates at elections for the House of Representatives, it is now possible to assess the use of these and compare them with previous estimates. This paper therefore looks at the concept of the ‘two‐party preferred vote’ in the light of such publication and the introduction of optional preferential voting in New South Wales.     

Presidential elections and Europe: the 2012 game-changer

Abstract

As well as marking 60 years since the signature of the Treaty of Rome, 2017 will see the 10th presidential election of France’s Fifth Republic. The overlap between the question of Europe and the election to France’s highest office provides the framework for this article to explore the development of the European debate in France. Prior to 2012, and despite the increasing and undeniable salience of it for French domestic concerns, the question of Europe is widely considered to have been a secondary issue in presidential elections. Focusing in particular on the period since the pivotal debate and referendum on the Maastricht Treaty and the intervening transition from ‘permissive consensus’ to ‘constraining dissensus’, this article will explain how and why Europe has seemingly defied logic to remain on the margins of successive election campaigns, before presenting the 2012 presidential elections as a game-changer on how the question of Europe featured. The conclusion offers a discussion on the ramifications for future presidential elections, starting with that of 2017.     

Institutionally Induced Pendulum? An Assessment of State-level Influences on Post-war Australian Federal Voting

The extent of State-level influences on federal voting behaviour in Australia has been debated for many years. In this paper, I extend and improve on previous research by using the most advanced techniques (multilevel modelling) available for analysing survey data in this context, and present results based on an extensive investigation of post-war Australian elections. The results show conclusively that the overall extent of measurable State-level effects on federal voting over the period is relatively very small, despite the institutional significance of the States. In an attempt to reconcile these two facts, I therefore propose an institutional explanation of the small extent of State-level effects. I argue that the representation entitlements of the States in the House of Representatives would tend to result in the overall extent of State-level effects being relatively small because they introduce a self-correcting 'pendulum' element into party competition. I investigate some hypotheses that follow from this argument, demonstrate that the evidence from the multilevel modelling is consistent with these hypotheses, and conclude that this institutional element is a significant part of the explanation of the apparent unimportance of State-level influences.     

Swings and Roundabouts? Patterns of Voting for the Australian Labor Party at State and Commonwealth Lower House Elections, 1901-96

Federation for Australia in 1901 was closely followed by the rise of the mass party, an organisation with the potential to reduce the regional differentiation that federalism is designed to protect. Loyalty to party can submerge local issues in nationally based partisanship, and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) may have performed precisely this role, particularly if voters have not differentiated between voting for the ALP at state and Commonwealth elections. This article examines the pattern of electoral support for the ALP at state and Commonwealth elections since 1901 and finds that an apparent similarity in long-term voting support masks important variations both within and between states. The potential for mass party loyalty to create uniform voting responses across the federation has been strongly moderated by the diversity inherent in the federal system.     

Do reluctant voters vote less accurately? The effect of compulsory voting on party–voter congruence in Australia and Belgium

We know compulsory voting is associated with higher levels of electoral turnout. It has been suggested that this leads to a trade-off with the quality of the vote, i.e. the ideological congruence between voters and the party they vote for. In this study, this claim is investigated using data from the 2007, 2010, and 2013 elections in Australia. We also include a comparison with two recent elections in Belgium, another country with compulsory voting. The results show that reluctant voters vote less ideologically congruent, but that this effect is mediated by political knowledge and political interest. However, this does not lead to less ideologically congruent election results at the aggregate level and compulsory voting does not have an impact on electoral results. We speculate that in future studies, it is important to make a distinction between reluctant voters, and those who take a strong hostile stand on the electoral process.     

The ‘hip pocket nerve’ and electoral volatility in Australia and Great Britain

Over the course of the post‐war period, Australian voting behaviour has manifested a marked degree of aggregate stability, whereas British voting patterns have become increasingly volatile. Since class voting has declined at a similar rate in both countries, it cannot explain this divergence. This article suggests that the explanation is to be found in the differential electoral impact of the two countries' macroeconomic performance in this period. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, the state of the economy, as measured by the rates of inflation and unemployment, is shown to have been a less influential force in Australian general elections than in British ones. The greater aggregate volatility in Britain, in other words, would seem to reflect‐the electorate's greater sensitivity to its ‘hip pocket nerve’, especially when it is touched by inflation. Why this same relationship does not characterize Australian commonwealth elections can be speculated upon, but is a puzzle that remains to be solved.     

Party commitment,vote switching and liberal decline in Australia∗

Electoral outcomes are determined in part by voters who switch their political allegiance between elections. Though the subject of extensive study in other countries, this floating vote has received comparatively little attention in Australia. This paper uses 1967 and 1979 survey data to analyse vote switching in Australian elections. We argue, firstly, that turnover tables based on recalled voting are, as research in other countries has shown, inaccurate reflections of the election result. As an alternative, we propose a measure of ‘potential’ vote switching based on the concept of lifetime voting. Secondly, using this concept of lifetime voting to derive a measure of party commitment allows the construction of a three‐fold typology of Australian voters — partisans, marginals and switchers. Finally, a longitudinal analysis of the voting patterns of these three groups indicates a gradual erosion of electoral commitment to the Liberal party, whereas Labor has largely retained its partisan base.     

Ideological Primary Competition and Congressional Behavior

Abstract

Primary challenges on an incumbent’s more extreme flank have become increasingly common in congressional elections. We explore the consequences on the legislative behavior of successful incumbents following these types of challenges. We propose that the effect of extreme ideological primary challenges is conditioned on whether the member belongs to the majority or the minority party. We test our expectations on primary elections from 2000 to 2012 and corresponding changes in voting behavior in the next Congress. We find that incumbents in the majority party who have defeated an extreme ideological primary challenge are less likely to support their party, especially on key votes. We expect this reaction is because they fear appearing too moderate and thereby encouraging another extreme ideological primary challenge. We find that incumbents in the minority party who face an extreme ideological challenge do not change their general voting behavior, but are more likely to vote with their party on key votes.     

Political Dynasties in Thailand: The Recent Picture after the 2011 General Election

This article seeks to understand the patterns of family-based politics in Thailand’s 2011 House of Representatives election. The key question is whether the political dynasty, a sequence of political leaders who are considered members of the same family, is still a determining factor in Thai elections, and if so, to what extent compared to the past. Drawing on a rich set of data collected from election results between 1979 and 2011, this article argues that the political roles and influences of many political dynasties have become more complicated and have tended to increase, although some have experienced defeat in elections. The article finds that while belonging to a political dynasty could give new dynastic faces a better chance of winning a House election in their constituency than their non-dynastic counterparts, the most influential factor for electoral candidates in winning a House of Representatives election is belonging to the Pheu Thai Party or the Democrat Party. This article thus suggests that one of the best ways to avoid the monopoly of one or a few political families in Thai politics is to empower and support party members and eligible voters to meaningfully engage in political parties’ affairs and activities.     

Leadership and voting: the connection at the state level

While it is now well established that Australian party leaders at the national level influence political choice in federal elections, little systematic study has been undertaken of the equivalent role that State Premiers and Opposition Leaders might play. In the 2001 Australian Election Study (n=2010), questions were asked of a national probability sample of voters about respondent feelings towards their State Premier and State Opposition Leader, in addition to equivalent questions about Prime Minister John Howard, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley and other major political figures in federal politics. The data generated by this survey thus provide an opportunity to investigate the impact that contemporary State political leaders have on electoral choice. The analysis produces mixed results, but the findings show that State leaders generally do have an impact on voting behaviour in State elections, although in some cases this influence is eliminated when account is taken of voter attitudes towards the federal leaders. The analysis also affords an opportunity to test the extent of crossover between State and federal politics, in terms of how much State leaders influence federal voting and vice versa. While the results are somewhat uneven, they do indicate that some State leaders influence federal voting and that the federal leaders do influence voting in some States.     

A spatial interaction model of vote dispersion

How do votes disperse through a territory? Studies of spatial voting patterns have largely focused on the influence of local factors on voting. The “Friends and Neighbors” model (Key (1949)) explains the advantage of candidates running for office in the locality with which they are associated (Arzheimer and Evans (2012, 2014): Collignon and Sajuria (2018); Horiuchi et al. (2018); Jankowski (2016); Hunt (2020); Munis (2021)), and the “neighbor” effect helps to explain why votes spread. More recent studies have found that the dispersion of votes decreases with distance (Put et al. (2020); Arzheimer and Evans (2012)). However, we know little about how spatial patterns of voting emerge or the mechanism behind the neighbor effect. We argue that this effect depends on the neighbors’ access to information about a candidate, which is constrained by the way information flows. Although scholars have argued that information is a relevant driver explaining the dispersion of votes (Bowler et al. (1993); Arzheimer and Evans (2012); Evans et al. (2017); Campbell, Cowley, Vivyan, and Wagner (2019)), no research has examined the relevance of the network through which information flows. We propose that a spatial interaction model (Wilson (1971)) allows us to predict where this information flows or the voting pattern that will form. Taking advantage of a quasi-natural experiment in Brazilian legislative elections in 1974 and 1978, we show that votes spread through areas of influence created by a hierarchy of cities based on the flows of exchanges among them, including information. We then use our spatial interaction model to predict voting patterns in the elections of 1978 using data from the 1974 elections. Our findings show that the spatial interaction model results fit the data quite well and can help predict spatial patterns of voting.