THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE 1989 ELECTIONS OF PEOPLE'S DEPUTIES OF THE USSR (PRELIMINARY RESULTS)

In the first Soviet paper written on electoral geography in the USSR, a team of scholars analyzes results of recent elections to the Congress of People's Deputies. An introductory section explains the rationale for greater attention to electoral geography and assesses Western research from a Soviet perspective. Interesting spatial insights (supplemented by maps) are offered on whether existing electoral districts provide equitable representation for the population, on voter turnout (including negative voting against “establishment” candidates), and the level of social-political activism. A concluding section surveys prospects for the further participation of geographers in the study of electoral processes (translated by Jay K. Mitchell, PlanEcon, Inc., Washington, DC 20005).     

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 GEOGRAPHY OF ELECTIONS OF USSR PEOPLE'S DEPUTIES BY NATIONAL-TERRITORIAL DISTRICTS AND THE NATIONALITIES ISSUE

A Soviet political geographer analyzes elections to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies (March 26, 1989), based on returns from nationality-based electoral districts from which one-third of all deputies were elected (see Soviet Geography, October 1989 special issue). Topics investigated include problems in the partitioning of electoral districts (including analysis of the tendency toward the under-representation of cities relative to rural areas), the number of candidates vying for each deputy seat in various districts, the backgrounds of winning and losing candidates, and the extent to which elected deputies mirrored the nationality composition of their respective electoral districts. Translated by Jay K. Mitchell, PlanEcon, Inc., Washington, DC 20005.     

Parties,Participation and Outcomes: The 2008 Victorian Local Government Elections

In November 2008, voters in Victoria participated in local government elections under a system that has been subject to significant reform since the 1980s. This paper seeks to discern trends from the outcomes and identify significant structural features of the reformed system. With regards to outcomes, the paper highlights the high success rate amongst incumbent councillors and the strong sense of successful candidates being independent of political parties. The paper argues that these outcomes have been particularly influenced by the proliferation of electoral districts with relatively small voting populations or by the use of multimember electoral systems in larger districts. The variety of systems used underpins a localised and ‘clientelist’ politics that militates against the dominance of political parties over the contest. The paper also draws attention to the comparatively low rate of voter participation in an election in which compulsory voting applies. It argues that voter absenteeism was particularly noticeable in municipalities with large numbers of residents renting properties and might be explained as a form of ‘renters’ illusion’ impacting on voting behaviour.     

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.     

Spatial analysis of bureaucrats’ attempts to resist political capture in a developing democracy: The distribution of solar panels in Ghana

Can civil servants in a developing democracy successfully resist political capture in the distribution of public goods? Existing research tends to highlight political patronage logics of distribution, and scholarship focuses primarily on politicians’ motivations. But service decisions are often made by bureaucrats, who sometimes explicitly try to avoid capture and allocate on the basis of need. Using qualitative interviews and spatial regressions with geo-coded data from a solar panel program in Ghana, we examine such a situation. We show that, despite considerable efforts to thwart it, national-level civil servants were unable to fully resist political capture. While solar panel distribution partially corresponded to need for electricity, we find that panels also went to areas where voter turnout was historically inconsistent, likely to motivate voter turnout. The direction of these relationships was consistent across subnational space, but the magnitudes varied considerably and were strongest in districts adjacent to Lake Volta. Qualitative data analysis reveals that this subnational variation reflects the logistics of space and the historical politics of place. The article contributes to theories of distributive politics and of voting behavior, and highlights the need for subnational disaggregation across space.     

(Un)Informed Voting? A Test of Compulsory Voting Feedback Effects

Compulsory voting is known to increase turnout and produce a more representative electorate, but there is considerable debate about whether it stimulates political learning. Analyses of political knowledge using cross‐national and intranational observational data arrive at mixed conclusions. Experimental research is similarly inconclusive. We attempt to reconcile these disparate results by employing a novel experiment that tracks political learning during real elections and randomly assigns some people to receive a punitive threat for failure to cast an in‐person vote. We demonstrate that compelled voter participation can increase voter participation and political learning, but also prompts anger.     

A Tale of Three Variables: Exploring the Impact of Alternative Measures of Presidential Approval On Congressional Voting

This study explores the impact of three distinct measures of public approval on congressional voting. Specifically, we test for the relative impact of a president's national approval, his partisan approval, and his district- (or state-) level approval on congressional support, measured at the level of individual members of Congress. Though we remain consistent with other arguments that hold presidential approval is likely to act as a background variable rather than a determinant of congressional voting, we maintain that theoretically more meaningful relationships between public opinion and congressional voting can be developed. Specifically, we argue that a more relevant test can be made which includes opinion measured closest to where that opinion is likely to matter to members, namely among electoral copartisans and district-level constituencies. We estimate various models (bivariate and integrated multivariate), and find strong support for our hypotheses that, to the extent members of Congress use public approval as a voting cue, they do in fact pay far more attention to partisan and constituency interests than they do to national opinion.     

A Rayon-Level Analysis of the Russian Election and Constitutional Plebiscite of December 1993

Two specialists on the electoral geography of post-Soviet Russia present findings from the first systematic study of regional political patterns at the rayon level. Drawing on a sample of 303 rayons from nine oblasts, the analysis underscores the salience of the urban-rural divide in Russian politics, as manifested in voters' preferences for parties and their support for the new Russian constitution in the national election of December 1993. The extent to which party preference, voting on the constitution, and voter turnout are associated with one another and with the age composition and educational attainment of the population in the respective units is tested using regression techniques. 4 figures, 6 tables, 28 references.     

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.     

Electoral salience and the costs of voting at national, sub-national and supra-national elections in the UK: a case study of Brent, UK

This paper considers the impact of distance to polling station upon electoral turnout. Using polling station level data from a London borough, it examines three types of election – parliamentary, European and local elections – over a twenty year period. The UK is notable among western liberal democracies for its relatively large turnout gap – the percentage point difference between turnout at elections for the Westminster parliament compared to that for other institutions, including local councils and the supra-national European parliament. This research considers the hypothesis that in high information, high salience elections for the national parliament the costs of voting associated with travelling to a polling station to vote in person are perceived as either low or insignificant but that in low information, low salience elections, those costs are perceived as higher and may act as a deterrent upon voting. A series of multi-level models consider the relationships between the dependent variable, percentage turnout, and a range of independent variables, including socio-economic characteristics, marginality as well as the spatial context. We show that there is indeed a relationship between distance and voter turnout, and other spatial and contextual variables, which are stronger for the lower salience European and local elections than for the higher salience national elections. Hence we conclude that the local geography of the polling station can have a significant impact on voter turnout and that there should be a more strategic approach to the siting of polling stations.     

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.     

Democracy,decentralization, and district proliferation: The case of Ghana

In many developing countries, a rhetorical commitment to decentralization often superficially manifests through the creation of new or smaller administrative units at the sub-national level. In democracies in particular, this raises the question of whether sub-national unit proliferation is intended for winning popular support in elections or addressing the concerns of local citizens. This paper analyzes the motivations for district creation by focusing on Ghana, which is oft-considered one of Africa's more committed countries to decentralization. At the same time, successive governments repeatedly have divided the country into more districts in an espoused effort to more effectively bring services closer to citizens. With an in-depth focus on the most recent increase from 170 to 216 districts between 2008 and 2012, this paper employs national and district census, socioeconomic, and electoral data to examine which districts were split and why. Instead of representing a source of patronage to swing voters or a divide-and-rule strategy in opposition strongholds, the study finds that the incumbent party at the time, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), used re-districting as a tactic of malapportionment and predominantly targeted non-competitive districts where gaining an additional legislative seat in subsequent elections was more likely. Evidence suggests that this pattern is not specific to the NDC and that previous district splitting under the New Patriotic Party (NPP) also focused disproportionately on that party's safe seats. Overall, the paper emphasizes the need for according greater consideration to underlying institutional aspects, particularly electoral rules and executive-legislative relations, when analyzing the motivations for territorial reforms.     

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.     

Participation and Representation in ATSIC Elections: A 10 Year Perspective

This paper examines participation and representation in ATSIC elections over the 10 year period since 1990. It attempts to identify patterns of participation and representation that seem to be emerging and what these might suggest about ATSIC's operation. By examining numbers of nominees compared to positions available, the paper suggests that ATSIC elected office has been fairly keenly and consistently sought and competed for by Indigenous people, though there may have been some slight initial reticence in the 1990 elections. By examining voter numbers and voter turnout, the paper suggests that voter participation nation-wide rose slightly from 1990 to 1996 and then largely stabilised in 1999. It also suggests that there have been significant variations from this national pattern at State and Territory levels and it explores some reasons for this. The paper also examines voter numbers and voter turnout at the ATSIC regional level since 1993 and finds that there has been much higher voter turnout in the sparsely settled regions of northern Australia and much lower voter turnout in the southern and urban areas. This is explained in terms of ATSIC program and expenditure priorities and in terms of polling place access. The final two sections of the paper examine the representation of women and Torres Strait Islanders among ATSIC elected representatives. Both are seen as significant issues which should be of some ongoing concern within ATSIC, alongside the issue of the southern/northern difference in voter participation.     

Five Factions,Two Parties: Caucus Membership in the House of Representatives, 1994–2002

This paper examines the extent of ideological cohesion and distinction of two Republican congressional factions (the conservative Republican Study Committee and the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership) and three Democratic congressional caucuses (the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, the liberal Congressional Black Caucus, and the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus) in the House of Representatives from 1994 to 2002. Whereas much of the literature on congressional caucuses has focused on the reasons members join such groups and the policy and political orientations of those groups, this paper examines how much unity exists in the voting behavior of the members of Congress who join caucuses in comparison to their fellow partisans not in a faction. Although political parties are still a major unifying force for their respective party members, we do find that factional members are more ideologically cohesive than are nonfactional members. Joining a faction is not an insignificant activity for members. Factions allow like-minded colleagues to come together and vote on common issues, at times against direction of their party.     

SCHOOL DISTRICT BUDGETARY ELECTIONS: A COST REDISTRIBUTE PROCEDURE?

This article examines, theoretically and empirically, school district budgetary election voting behavior. In the study it is argued that the change from fiscally independent to state-funds dependent school district operations may have altered the traditional cost/quantity-based school budgetary voting behavior. With the assumption of state aid schemes to school districts, the school district budgetary election processes may have become political procedures by which the cost of school district operations has been distributed to broader tax bases.     

New Labour,new electoral system,new electoral geographies?: A review of proposed constitutional changes in the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom electoral system remained virtually unchanged throughout the twentieth century but three reports (two of them commissioned by the Labour government elected in 1997) published in late 1998 propose significant changes in: the administration of elections, with specific reference to increasing turnout rates; the funding of political parties and electoral campaigns; and the electoral system itself—with a recommendation for a system that is broadly proportional but retains the link between (most) MPs and single-member constituencies. This paper reviews those reports, relates them to the geography of electoral behaviour in the UK, and explores the geographical implications of their major recommendations.     

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.     

Public Presidential Appeals and Congressional Floor Votes: Reassessing the Constitutional Threat

The assertion that public appeals by presidents can create electoral threats to noncompliant members of Congress is central to arguments about the value of "going public" as a legislative strategy. Although recent scholarship suggests a link between popular presidential rhetoric and the likelihood of bill passage, researchers have yet to examine the impact of public presidential appeals on individual legislators. This study examines the logic of electoral threats imposed by going public. We test whether a president's going public with increased intensity leads individual members of Congress to increase their support for presidential preferences on congressional floor votes. We employ several measures to assess the intensity of presidents' public appeals, including domestic speeches, nationally televised addresses, and speeches in legislators' home states. Several logistic regression models are tested to determine whether congressional support for presidential preferences on the floor is influenced by the interaction between members' electoral vulnerability and presidents' use of popular appeals. The findings suggest that presidential speechmaking has very little impact on the likelihood that members of Congress will support the president's position on roll call votes. We argue that this suggests a necessary revision of criticisms of the "rhetorical presidency." Public presidential appeals do not seem to present a considerable threat to a constitutional order that is predicated on congressional autonomy and deliberation.