‘It’s a Long Way from Kuusamo to Kuhmo’: Mapping Candidates’ Electoral Constituencies in the Finnish Open-List Single Preference Voting System

David Arter

doi:10.1177/1478929920982509

Abstract

This article seeks an insight into the nature of intraparty competition in an open-list single preference voting system, and it does so by analysing the distribution of votes for Centre Party candidates in the 40 or so municipalities making up the northern Finnish constituency of Oulu in each of the five general elections between 2003 and 2019. It builds on Grofman’s distinction between a geographical constituency and a candidate’s electoral constituency to map the ecology of candidate support in a constituency with (1) a larger than average district magnitude (M); (2) a significantly larger than average territorial magnitude (T); and (3) a substantially larger than average Centre party magnitude (P). Setting M, T and P within a party organisational framework, the article identifies (1) a significant disparity between levels of intraparty competition at district and sub-district levels; (2) several contextual factors that act more as disincentives than incentives to engage in personal vote seeking across the electoral district.

Highlights

The focus of this article is on the ecology of the personal vote (Cain, 1987; Carey and Shugart, 1995; Shugart, 2008; Swindle, 2002; Zittel, 2017) in a ‘personalised electoral system’ (Pilet and Renwick, 2018) – Finnish open-list PR – that obliges voters to express a single preference among individual candidates and determine who is elected
Evidence that the local candidate gained the largest share of the local party vote is perhaps less surprising than the generally low effective number of co-partisan rivals
In order to place party-level factors à la Bergman et al (2013) at the forefront of the analysis, the empirical work focused on the Centre stronghold of Oulu constituency in northern Finland

Summary

Introduction

The focus of this article is on the ecology of the personal vote (Cain, 1987; Carey and Shugart, 1995; Shugart, 2008; Swindle, 2002; Zittel, 2017) in a ‘personalised electoral system’ (Pilet and Renwick, 2018) – Finnish open-list PR – that obliges voters to express a single preference among individual candidates and determine who is elected. They argue that ‘as the number of co-partisans a candidate faces increases relative to the number of seats her party is likely to win, the more the candidates must cultivate a personal reputation in order to get one of those predicted seats’ (Crisp et al, 2007: 731) They conclude on the basis of the 2003 Finnish general election that the C: P ratio was greatest where parties won the fewest seats and they suggest that ‘in open-list systems, personal vote seeking incentives will be greatest where a candidate’s party is traditionally weakest’ (Crisp et al, 2007: 732; see Bräuninger et al, 2012: 632).

10.4 Kainuu

Results

Concluding Remarks