Abstract

General theories of electoral competition often assume that parties are ‘strategic’ – that parties pick their battles and pragmatically abandon unpromising districts. But most parties in district-based electoral systems contradict this assumption, running candidates nearly everywhere, with little apparent regard for their prospects. This gap between theory and practice has yet to receive focused attention. This article examines elections in Canada, Great Britain, Jamaica, the USA, and Japan to answer two basic-research questions: How prevalent is strategic electoral entry (in established democracies with simple-plurality or single non-transferable vote elections)? And how does one measure strategic entry in the first place? Although strategicness does vary somewhat across and within party systems, non-strategic entry proves most common. These results invite further research on why strategicness varies and how this variation shapes party system development.

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