Candidate Running Research Articles

The issue of security in the elections programmes of candidates for the office of President of Ukraine in 2019

The aim of the article is to present the programme priorities in the field of security policy, announced by each candidate running for the office of President of Ukraine in 2019. In addition, it also attempts to show how they intended to: ensure state security, bring the war in the Donbass to an end, restore the territorial integrity – thus, to regain Kyiv’s control over the Donbass and Crimea, as well as where they were going to look for allies capable of providing support to Ukraine on the path to achieving the above-mentioned goals. An analysis of the elections programmes of each candidate will allow us to answer the questions. Attention was paid to the programme demands of those candidates who reeived at least a five per cent support in the presidential elections. Hence, the elections programmes of the participants of the second round of the elections, namely those of Volodymyr Zelensky, Petro Poroshenko, and also Yulia Tymoshenko, Yuriy Boyko, Anatoliy Hrytsenko, Ihor Smeshko as well as Oleh Lyashko, were subjected to analysis.

The Downside of Ranking Systems: Qualified Contenders May Quit

Ranking systems may deter qualified but lower ranked contenders from persisting or re-entering competitions (“ranking effect”). Using archival data from the U.S. Primary elections to the House of Representatives, we find that ranking one position lower is associated with a 22% decrease in the likelihood of the candidate running again in the next electoral cycle, even after controlling for differences in the percentage of votes, the level of funding and other potential confounders. Experimental evidence confirms that lower rankings, even when performance is similar to that of higher ranked contenders, undermines confidence in future success, discouraging lower ranked individuals from re-entering competitions. We extend the prior research that has focused on the positive consequences of ranking systems and show that rankings can have detrimental consequences for retaining talent. If ranking systems discourage competent and talented individuals from re-entering competitions, this could lead to significant losses for both individuals and organizations.

Pokusy o demokratizaci volebního systému ve druhé polovině šedesátých let a volby v roce 1971

The political liberalisation of the 1960s had its echo also in reflections about the need to democratise the Czechoslovak electoral system. Elections in communist Czechoslovakia were a farce: they were held in single-member districts, in which only one candidate run, leaving the voter with no choice. Act No 113/1967 of 30 November 1967 on elections to the National Assembly, and the accompanying Act No 114/1967 on elections to national committees, introduced multi-member districts in which the number of candidates was higher than the number of seats. Thus, for the first time since the 1948 elections, voters were given the chance to choose from a multitude of canditates, not just one. The first elections to be held this way were planned for the spring of 1968, but were – also in the context of the preparation of the constitutional act on the federal system – postponed first to autumn 1968 and then to the following year. The Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, which began on 21 August 1968, and the onset of what is called normalisation meant that the electoral reform was not realized at all. In the autumn of 1969, elections were again postponed until 1971. For these elections, a new electoral law was adopted, bringing back the old practice of single-member districts with but one candidate running. The elections held in 1976, 1981 and 1986 followed that undemocratic procedure.

Using the Markov chain to predict the outcome of an election in a given situation

This paper used Markov Chain, a mathematical model that is often utilized in predicting, to forecast the result of the election process of a person in a specific circumstance. In the way of modeling, starting from the tree diagram to the model of Markov Chain and related transition matrix, this paper aimed at the election result, which relates the object of study, a specific candidate. The research data are collected from the prompt of the research question and the calculation of coding based on the transition matrix. The result is, when it is the 64th year of that specific candidate running for the reelection campaign, he will be likely to retire from politics.

Mixed records, complexity, and ethnic voting in African elections

• Utilizes a survey experiment in a representative exit poll during Kenya’s election. • Explores effects of incumbent co-ethnicity and mixed performance on vote choice. • Effect of co-ethnicity is highest under mixed (versus uniform) performance. • Mixed performance increases evaluation complexity, inducing ethnic heuristic. • Suggests challenges of evaluating performance create barriers to accountability. Incumbent politicians often deliver mixed performance records: good results in some areas but poor ones in others. We explore the challenges these records generate for voters attempting to use elections to incentivize better governance, improved development outcomes, and greater accountability. We argue that evaluation of mixed records poses a more complex cognitive task for citizens than the evaluation of either uniformly good or bad records. Unlike uniform records, mixed records require weighting and aggregating information across multiple dimensions, raising the difficulty of arriving at a single, clear evaluation of performance. Evaluative complexity, in turn, induces voters to rely more heavily on informational shortcuts like ethnicity, reducing the effectiveness of elections as accountability mechanisms. We evaluate the link between ethnic voting and mixed performance records using a survey experiment implemented in a nationally representative exit poll during Kenya’s 2013 election. The survey experiment manipulated two factors, the ethnicity of a hypothetical candidate running for president and their performance record (with uniformly good, uniformly bad, and mixed performance conditions). We find that co-ethnicity between respondent and candidate had a large effect on voting when the candidate’s prior record was mixed, but no effect when it was uniform. Our results suggest that ethnic voting is situational rather than dispositional: even performance-oriented citizens vote ethnically when performance records are difficult to evaluate. They also suggest an under-appreciated source of accountability problems in developing countries: not fixed voter attachment to co-ethics, but rather reliance on informational shortcuts to deal with the challenges of evaluating performance in complex environments.

Money and Ideology: Evidence from Candidate Manifestos

Do campaign contributions influence politicians? In this article, we study the impact of corporate donations on ideology and political discourse. We construct a novel dataset that combines the campaign manifestos issued by every candidate running for a seat in the French parliament with data on the amount and origin of their campaign contributions. We exploit an exogenous historical shock on corporate donations to estimate their causal impact on the content of campaign communication. Combining a difference-in-differences approach with computational text analysis, we show that receiving more donations from small and local corporate donors encourages candidates to advertise their local presence over national politics during the campaign. We also find evidence that donations lead candidates from extreme parties to moderate their rhetoric—including shifts in the policy topics they advertise. Our findings may reflect a quid-pro-quo effect between donors and politicians, but they may also result from an electoral effect: receiving expressive contributions from corporate donors affects the content of campaign messages because it changes candidates' perception of which issues matter most to voters. According to our findings, campaign finance regulations may alter the information made available to voters through their impact on candidates' rhetoric.

Strategic Split-Ticket Voting in Mixed Electoral Systems

This article aims to examine strategic split-voting in mixed systems by analyzing the results of elections in three countries using mixed electoral systems—Germany, Hungary, and Lithuania—to further improve researchers' understanding of the relationship between strategic voting and ticket splitting. This is achieved by exploring new quantitative measures. The three selected countries do not use identical electoral systems, but their common characteristic is that they provide an opportunity for voters to split their ballot between an individual candidate running in a single-member constituency and a party list. This makes it possible to compare the two different types of votes and to search for patterns indicating strategic behavior. In this article, the authors introduce two analytic tools: one for determining the approximate quantity of split ballots and another for measuring strategic voting patterns based on the concentration of split tickets.

Religion, European Elections and EU politics

L’objectif de cet article est de mieux saisir la résurgence de la religion dans l’agenda politique d’une Europe laïque. L’accent est placé ici sur l’Union européenne (UE). Le facteur religieux est envisagé tour à tour comme un facteur d’influence sur les attitudes et les comportements politiques, comme une composante idéologique et partisane, et en tant qu’enjeu politique controversé. Nous analysons ainsi les effets du facteur religieux lors des précédentes élections européennes en tant qu’élément cadrant la perception de l’intégration européenne ainsi que le vote. Nous documentons ensuite la crise qui affecte la famille démocrate-chrétienne incarnée par le Parti populaire européen (PPE) et les récits concurrents sur la religion visant à revendiquer le leadership dans la redéfinition de l’idéologie centrale et des démarcations de cette famille politique. Deux études de cas sont développées : la « crise hongroise » et la politique identitaire promue par Viktor Orban ; et le processus Spitzenkandidaten destiné à sélectionner le candidat du PPE briguant la présidence de la Commission européenne. Enfin, nous étudions le traitement de la religion comme une question politique au sein du Parlement européen (PE), et l’envisagerons aussi en tant qu’éventuelle pomme de discorde pour la législature 2019-2024.

Religion, European Elections and EU Politics. A Resilient Second-Order Factor for a Second-Order Polity?

The purpose of this article is to make sense of the resurgence of religion on the political agenda of a secularizing Europe. The focus is placed on the European Union (EU). The religious factor is considered alternatively as an influence on political attitudes and behaviours; as an ideological and party component; and as a controversial policy stake. We analyse the effects of the religious factor in past European elections as an element framing the perception of European integration and voting. We then document the crisis affecting the Christian-Democratic family incarnated by the European People’s Party (EPP) and competing narratives about religion to claim leadership in the redefinition of the core ideology and the boundaries of this political family. Two cases studies are developed: The ‘Hungarian crisis’ and identity politics promoted by Viktor Orban: the Spitzenkandidaten process to select the EPP candidate running for the presidency of the Commission. We finally study the treatment of religion as a policy issue within the EP and as a potential bone of contention in the incoming term.

Authoethnography as an Act of Resistance Against Narratives of Hatred

On November 8, 2016, a presidential candidate running on a campaign marked by exclusion and hatred against so many Others won the election and the U.S. Executive Branch. We, the authors, went from being concerned with the reverberations of Trump’s narrative of hatred to the shocking realization that we were entering an era of renewed politics of hatred and exclusion. In this article, we talk about how our autoethnography can help us find our common humanity in the spaces between Us and Them. We talk about our hope that autoethnography can help us trouble the simplistic fixed identities of the Other required for campaigns of hatred and exclusion, how it can help us stay anchored to the notion that hope for unconditional inclusion is not a choice but an ontological necessity.

Political Influence on Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article examines the extent to which political variables affect budget deficits, money growth and inflation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using the Arellano–Bond dynamic panel data analysis on 36 SSA countries from 1980 to 2010, we first characterise the impact of presidential elections on two policy variables: government budget deficits and money growth. We then examine the impact of government budget deficits and money growth on inflation, while taking account of any direct political pressure via presidential elections. Importantly, we show that country groups, based on the level of income, are important in teasing out the varying effects of budget deficits and elections, finding evidence of political budget cycles and political monetary cycles in the middle-income countries. We also characterise whether a country is part of a fixed-exchange rate regime, showing that this limits electoral pressure on the monetary policy variable. We examine the competitiveness of elections by whether they are multiparty or single-party elections and by whether there is an incumbent candidate running for re-election. When we examine the feed-on effects on inflation, there is little indication that the election pressures on either fiscal or monetary variables become inflationary. There is evidence, however, of money growth and budget deficits being directly inflationary, particularly in the low-income countries.

What Do Voters in Ukraine Want?: A Survey Experiment on Candidate Ethnicity, Language, and Policy Orientation

Language, ethnicity, and policy orientation toward Europe are key cleavages in Ukrainian society, but there is much debate about their relative importance. Based on a survey experiment of 1000 residents of Ukraine that manipulated three features of a fictional candidate running for parliament, I find that a candidate’s ethnicity and language had little impact on reported vote choice, whereas economic policy orientation toward Europe was strongly associated with vote preference. Despite the intense politicization of both ethnicity and language and the violence in eastern Ukraine vote choice has not been reduced to an ethnic or linguistic census.

A Memorandum for Judging the Candidates Running in the Law Society of Upper Canada's (Ontarioos) 2015 Bencher Election

The candidates for the Law Society of Upper Canada’s bencher election, which concluded on April 30, 2015, should have dealt with the national unaffordable legal services problem as the determinative issue, because: (1) it afflicts the majority of the population in that people cannot afford lawyers’ legal advice services; (2) it is clogging the courts with self-represented litigants; (3) it is greatly depressing the economic future of Canada’s legal profession; and, (4) it is making increasingly difficult the funding of legal aid organizations as more taxpayers cannot obtain a lawyer’s advice services. Because of its much outmoded method of delivering legal services, the legal profession has priced itself beyond the majority of the population. It uses a “handcraftsman’s method” instead of a support services method for producing legal services. Like handcraftsmen, law firms use no outside, specialized, scaled-up volume, support services. “Nothing cuts costs as effectively as scaling-up,” i.e., “bigger is better.” The legal profession has no counterpart to the medical profession’s infrastructure of mutually interdependent, highly specialized support services of specialized doctors, technicians, technical tests, drugs, and hospital services. No doctor’s office provides all treatments and remedies to all patients, as does a law firm for all clients.Benchers perform like the charitable, part-time amateurs that were the 19th bencher-managers of law societies. They are amateurs because they lack the expertise to solve problems as complex as the unaffordable legal services problem, and they don’t go out and get it, and in the province of Ontario, they average only 31 days work per year, and their work is almost totally unpaid. Their legal duties are to the public, but they are elected by the lawyer-members of Ontario’s law society, the Law Society of Upper Canada. Therefore: (1) they are a politically unaccountable regulator of an important professional service; and, (2) the public has insufficient opportunity to affect the making of law society policy and practice. And their law society work conflicts with their need to cope with their duties to their clients or institutional legal departments, and with their motivations for becoming benchers. Therefore, there are eight major reasons for the inadequacy of law society management. As a result, a different management structure is needed for Canada’s law societies.If law societies are to avoid government intervention into their management, they must create: (1) a national institute of experts that can: (a) provide advice on the necessary changes in the demand for legal services and how to satisfy them; (b) advise how to maintain legal services as affordable to the population; and, (c) expertly monitor similar changes and innovations in other countries; and (2) create specialized support services, having greater cost-efficiency in their production of specialized legal services than law firms can provide for themselves.See also: “Access to Justice – Canada's Unaffordable Legal Services – CanLII as the Necessary Support Service” (http://ssrn.com/abstract=2365818); and the other “access to justice” papers on my SSRN author’s page.

Candidate Age and Youth Voter Turnout

The research addresses youth voter turnout in the United States and, specifically, tests the relationship between candidate age and a commitment to vote by young people in a controlled experiment. We learn that potential young voters are more willing to commit to vote when they view pictures of younger candidates running. This is the case after controlling for the age and partisanship of respondents. In a real-world test of our experimental results, we examine state-level variation in youth voter turnout in midterm governor and Senate races (1994-2010). In the state-level analysis, we find a larger candidate age gap in governor and Senate races associates with higher levels of youth mobilization. In all, the research affirms the value of candidate characteristics as a predictor of voting behavior.

On the Equal and Substantial Protection of Political Rights for People with Disabilities: Infringement of Right to Equality for Severely Disabled Candidates Running for Public Office(2006Hun-Ma626(Feb. 26, 2009))

On the Equal and Substantial Protection of Political Rights for People with Disabilities: Infringement of Right to Equality for Severely Disabled Candidates Running for Public Office(2006Hun-Ma626(Feb. 26, 2009))

What Do Voters in Ukraine Want? A Survey Experiment on Candidate, Language, Ethnicity and Policy Orientation

Language, ethnicity, and policy orientation toward Europe are key cleavages in Ukrainian politics, but there is much debate about their relative importance. To isolate the impact of candidate ethnicity, candidate native language, and candidate policy orientation on a hypothetical vote choice, I conducted a survey experiment of 1000 residents of Ukraine in June 2014 that manipulated three features of a fictional candidate running for parliament: 1) ethnicity as revealed by either a Russian or Ukrainian name 2) native language of Russian or Ukrainian and 3) support for closer economic ties with Russia or with Europe. The results reveal little difference in the average response to these 8 fictitious candidates despite the candidate’s different ethnicities, native language, and economic policy orientations. This seeming homogeneity masks vast differences in the responses of self-reported native speakers of Russian and Ukrainian. Analyzing the responses among Ukrainian and among Russian speakers yields considerable differences in the responses to the different candidates. Perhaps most striking is that among both native speakers of Russian and native speakers of Ukrainian a candidate’s economic policy orientation toward Europe or Russia appears to be a more important determinant of vote choice than a candidate’s language or ethnicity. That policy retains its importance for voters despite the intense politicization of both ethnicity and language and ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine suggests that vote choice in Ukraine has not been reduced to an ethnic or linguistic census.

Where Do Women Run? A Case for the Study of “Women Friendly Districts” in State Legislative Primaries

This study explores the political, institutional, and socio-demographic factors that contribute to the entry of women candidates in state legislative primaries. Using a dataset constructed from 49 partisan state legislative primary elections from 20012010, a binary time series cross-sectional logistic model is used to determine which factors are independently related to the probability of a woman candidate running for office. Women candidates run in districts that have a higher income, more professional people, are typically in cities with a higher urban population. Women candidates typically do not run in states with more professionalized legislatures, but are more likely to run in districts that are in session longer. Women are more likely to be present in districts where there is a lot of competition for a seat, i.e. multimember districts. The electoral environment that women face is different than men.

The optimization of running time for a maximum common substructure-based algorithm and its application in drug design

In the field of drug discovery, it is particularly important to discover bioactive compounds through high-throughput virtual screening. The maximum common substructure-based (MCS) algorithm is a promising method for the virtual screening of drug candidates. However, in practical applications, there is always a trade-off between efficiency and accuracy. In this paper, we optimized this method by running time evaluation using essential drugs defined by WHO and FDA-approved small-molecule drugs. The amount of running time allocated to the MCS-based virtual screening was varied, and statistical analysis was conducted to study the impact of computation running time on the screening results. It was determined that the running time efficiency can be improved without compromising accuracy by setting proper running time thresholds. In addition, the similarity of compound structures and its relevance to biological activity are analyzed quantitatively, which highlight the applicability of the MCS-based methods in predicting functions of small molecules. 15–30s was established as a reasonable range for selecting a candidate running time threshold. The effect of CPU speed is considered and the conclusion is generalized. The potential biological activity of small molecules with unknown functions can be predicted by the MCS-based methods.

Proximity voting in the 2010 U.S. House elections

Utilizing data that allows for the placement of both of the candidates running and voters on the same ideological scale, I model proximity voting in the 2010 House elections. I demonstrate that though the literature predominantly emphasizes partisanship and incumbency, relative distance from the candidates also plays a significant role in the voting decision. Additionally, I show that these proximity effects are conditional upon the type of candidate running and the individual's partisan attachment. In total, these results show that while the rates of partisan voting and incumbent victory are high in House elections, voters do consider ideological proximity and can punish candidates who take positions that are too far out of line.

The Appeal of Black Republican Candidates: Does Party and Gender Matter? An Experimental Study

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States has coincided with increased levels of black involvement within the Republican Party: The 2010 elections ushering in Black Republicans into Congress for the first time since 2003, Jennifer Carroll becoming the first black Republican woman elected Lieutenant Governor of Florida, and current black Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain gaining popularity among Republican primary voters. Given these recent developments, I am interested in the following research questions: What is the appeal of black Republican candidates when compared to black Democratic candidates? Furthermore, what is the level of appeal of black female Republican candidates when compared to black male Republican candidates and black male and female Democratic candidates? Most black candidates and office holders identify with the Democratic Party and most black voters vote for Democratic candidates. Thus, it posits the puzzle of how voters perceive black Republican candidates in comparison to black Democratic candidates and whether gender plays a role in this perception. In response to this puzzle, I conducted an experiment of a fictitious black candidate running for statewide office, whose profile is varied only along party identification and gender cues. My findings illustrate that party and gender cues often intersect in the evaluation of black candidates. This study is timely and important as we consider how candidate evaluation studies treat race, gender, and political party variables.