District Vote Research Articles

District vote e proportional vote: what is the best alternative for Brazil?

Brazilian legislative elections are defined through the proportional voting system that seeks to preserve the diversity of political groups existing in Brazilian society. This system, however, is widely criticized for producing a political system with high party fragmentation and great instability in the relationship between the executive and legislative powers. In this sense, some analysts argue that the best alternative for Brazil would be to replace the current proportional voting system with a majority voting system, as this would reduce party fragmentation and allow for greater political stability. It is not in the context of this discussion that this article is inserted. It aims to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of majority and proportional voting systems and their inclusion in the Brazilian electoral system.

Minority turnout and representation under cumulative voting. An experiment.

Under majoritarian election systems, securing the participation and representation of minorities remains an open problem, made salient in the US by its history of voter suppression. One remedy recommended by the courts is the adoption of Cumulative Voting (CV) in multi-member districts: each voter has as many votes as open positions but can cumulate votes on as few candidates as desired. Historical experiences are promising but also reflect episodes of minority activism. We present the results of a controlled lab experiment that isolates the role of the voting rule from other confounds. Although each voter is treated equally, theory predicts that CV should increase the minority's turnout relative to the majority and the minority's share of seats won. The experimental results strongly support both theoretical predictions.

An institutional safety net? How electoral institutions mediate the fortunes of parties under threat

ABSTRACT How do electoral institutions condition the electoral fortunes of parties under threat? In this article, we examine how Germany’s mixed-member proportional (MMP) system has influenced the vote share of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), a party under threat which has consistently lost votes over the past two decades. Using the 2013 and 2017 waves of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we find that voters are likely to engage in “sincere” vote switching on both the district and party ballots and that they are less likely to engage in “strategic” vote switching when they cast their district votes than when they cast their party votes, which protects SPD district candidates. Moreover, voters who stay with the SPD when casting their district vote are also less likely to switch their party votes, which protects the SPD’s overall vote share. We thus conclude that Germany’s MMP electoral system serves as an institutional safety net for the SPD as a party under threat. Our findings have important implications for understanding the ways in which electoral rules shape voting behavior and how different rules can mediate the decline of parties under threat.

Political Communication Strategy in Legislative Elections: A Case Study of Nasrul in the Period of 2019-2024 in Payakumbuh City

This study discusses the political communication carried out by Nasrul in the 2019–2024 legislative elections in Payakumbuh City. The focus of this research is on the elected candidates from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) due to being elected as a member of the DPRD Payakumbuh City with the most votes. The author assumes that his victory was motivated by good political communication. This research is a field research with a qualitative approach, while data collection is carried out through interviews with direct respondents Nasrul as the main source and secondary sources are the head of the PKS faction, a team of volunteers, community leaders who were selected based on sampling. The purpose of this study was to "know about the political communication used by Nasrul in the legislative elections" in Payakumbuh City for the 2019-2024 period. The results of this study, get the following conclusions: first, the political communication strategy used by Nasrul: 1) Nasrul uses the style of public relations communication (building relationships with the community). 2) Delivering political messages in the form of vision and mission. 3) Using media outside the campaign space such as stickers and calendars. 4) The effectiveness of Nasrul's political communication that is getting support in the form of voting in the legislative elections with acquiring 986 votes in electoral districts III (East Payakumbuh and North Payakumbuh).

The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction by Daniel Brook

Reviewed by: The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction by Daniel Brook Mary Niall Mitchell The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction. By Daniel Brook. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2019. Pp. xxiv, 344. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 978-0-393-53172-5; cloth, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-393-24744-2.) There are plenty of parallels between the end of Reconstruction in the United States and the political struggles of 2020. Although Radical Reconstruction's end is just part of the story that author Daniel Brook tells in The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction, the echoes in these [End Page 533] pages of today's racial and political divisions are unmistakable. In 1876, politicians in Washington, D.C., were questioning the results of the presidential election; voter suppression techniques aimed at people of color proliferated; and experts brought into southern states offered "tutorials on how to steal an election" (p. 218). A gubernatorial candidate in South Carolina (former Confederate general Wade Hampton III) mounted a parade featuring racist signs like those that have appeared at contemporary political rallies: "Carolina, Home of the White Man" (p. 221). If we needed to put a finer point on this comparison, we would look no further than the so-called Jim Crow Caucus disputing the 2020 presidential election, a recently formed group bent on erasing votes in majority-Black districts. Brook could not have foreseen all that transpired in 2020, but his book is timely and aimed explicitly at a general readership. In allowing civil rights activists of the Civil War and Reconstruction era to tell their stories "on their own terms," he hopes to "help remove our own blind spots about the long, imperfect struggle to build the world's most diverse democracy and about the racial system that still mars our national life" (p. xviii). While it is not clear to whom our refers—Americans of color generally have a clear view of the racial system they navigate every day—it is true that the nation's democracy is a work in progress. In light of present realities, in particular, the long struggle for civil rights is worth telling and retelling. Using the biographies of civil rights activists and their white supremacist opponents as building blocks, Brook's story centers on two so-called Misfit Metropolises: Charleston and New Orleans. By 1850, both cities had large, prosperous populations of free people of color. After the Civil War, many of these formerly free men of color, along with some men who had been born in slavery, became elected officials and powerful public voices advocating civil rights in public accommodations, including streetcars and schools. The author traces these political debates in a narrative synthesis of secondary literature, newspaper reports and editorials, records of constitutional conventions, and other printed statehouse deliberations. The scant bibliographical note at the end is kept minimal, referencing the granddaddies of Reconstruction history (W. E. B. Du Bois and Eric Foner) along with a few books on race, such as Barbara J. Fields and Karen Fields's work and Nell Irvin Painter's A History of White People (New York, 2010). The author has clearly used many of the rich secondary sources available for this period but does not discuss them in this note. Further, while Brook's skills as a journalist are valuable when applied to the complicated politics of Reconstruction, there are points at which a more serious tone would better serve the subjects of his story. To cite one example, he refers to the spiritualist practice of Creoles of color in New Orleans as a "voodoo séance" even though it was not voodoo, and spiritualism was popular on both sides of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century (p. 76). Nonetheless, The Accident of Color is a timely account of the complicated politics of race and racism in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book illuminates Reconstructionera strides toward racial equity as well as the successes of white supremacist politicians who rallied their base and set the stage for the next reckoning. [End Page 534] Mary Niall Mitchell University...

Początki politycznej kariery czołowych polityczek CDU i CSU na poziomie federalnym w Niemczech w latach 1991–2018

The article focuses on the first steps in the political career of female politicians from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), who assumed top political positions at the federal level in Germany between 1991 and 2018. The author analyses when the female leaders of the CDU and CSU took their first parliamentary seats in the German Bundestag, when they obtained the first leading positions at the federal level, and also how many years after joining the party this took place. It is also interesting whether top female politicians took their first parliamentary seats through votes in direct districts or thanks to the party list (second votes). Do the career paths of the female politicians from the Christian Democrats fit the model of typical career paths, or do they also include those who have avoided key positions on their way to the top?

The Efficiency Gap After Gill v. Whitford

ObjectiveThe objective of this article is to analyze the reasoning underpinning the Supreme Court's rejection of the efficiency gap in Gill v. Whitford as a useful measure of partisan fairness in redistricting.MethodsI undertake this analysis by reviewing prior judicial commentary on measures of partisan fairness and debates among political science professionals concerning how and whether to use aggregate statewide seat and vote totals to assess whether there is bias across legislative district elections.ResultsThe analysis reveals that the Supreme Court's rejection of the efficiency gap and other statewide measures of partisan fairness is based upon thoughtful skepticism of the extent to which votes cast under different conditions in different legislative districts for choices among discrete slates of candidates can be aggregated meaningfully into statewide measures that ignore these district‐specific conditions. This skepticism is reinforced by debates among scholars about how and whether partisan votes can be aggregated in this manner.ConclusionThe Court's rejection of the efficiency gap and skepticism about other aggregate measures of partisan fairness in redistricting reinforces the extensive criticism of using the single‐member district electoral system. It distorts electoral outcomes, limits voter choice, and, thereby, renders comparisons of partisan votes in different districts quite questionable. A shift to multimember districts with some form of proportional representation such as ranked choice voting would resolve much of the criticism of and uncertainty in redistricting analysis based on the statewide aggregation of discrete legislative district election results.

ANALISIS BEBAN KERJA KELOMPOK PENYELENGGARA PEMUNGUTAN SUARA (KPPS) MENGGUNAKAN METODE FTE (FULL TIME EQUIVALENT) PADA PEMILIHAN UMUM SERETAK TAHUN 2019 DI KABUPATEN BANGKA TENGAH

The 2019 Simultaneous Elections became a very heavy and broad workload for the Voter Organizer Group (KPPS). This is because KPPS must serve voters as many as 5 (five) ballots. KPPS expenses occur before, voting and counting and afterwards. The weight of the KPPS caused them to be exhausted, thus interfering with the voting and counting process, even causing work accidents such as illness and death. For this reason, work load calculation using the FTE (Full Time Equivalent) method is required. FTE method by dividing the work with real time. This research method is located at TPS 02 Padang Baru Village, Pangkalan Baru Subdistrict, Central Bangka Regency because KPSS has miscalculated so that the ballot box must be opened at the time of plenary at the PPK level (District Voting Committee). The method used by using work sampling in the process of counting votes conducted by KPPS at the TPS. From the FTE calculation results, the KPPS workload is included in the overload category, averaging above 2. With this FTE data as a recommendation for organizing elections so as not to provide a heavy workload for KPPS.

Decentralization and electoral swings

ABSTRACT This paper explores how the uniformity of electoral swings in the district vote within countries is affected by the level of economic and political decentralization. It relies on aggregate data from 3796 districts in 31 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in two consecutive national elections before and after the Great Recession to show that the more influential regional policies are for individuals’ well-being, the more uniform are electoral swings across districts. This causal mechanism accounting for the effect of decentralization on dynamic nationalization is examined with Internet panel surveys from national elections in Canada and Spain.

Decision period and Duverger's psychological effect in FPTP elections: Evidence from India

The plurality rule creates incentives that can divert the vote from the third parties. I argue that the process that converts such Duvergerian incentives into the Duvergerian outcomes has a temporal dimension: both strategic and non-strategic voters need time to form and communicate their preferences over candidates. To examine this connection, I capitalize on the institution of phased voting in India. I treat the timing of the district vote as the endpoint of the campaign period in the district and evaluate its effect on the vote for the leaders and the third parties, the third parties’ vote share, and the vote concentration. I find a positive effect of campaign period duration on the extent of the observed strategic behaviors in the district.

Explaining the Success of the People’s Party: An Analysis of South Korea’s 2016 Legislative Elections

What explains the success of the upstart People’s Party in the 2016 Korean National Assembly election? Through preelection survey data, this article first identifies the demographic factors corresponding with support for the People’s Party and how this differs from preexisting parties. Next, it elaborates on how the two‐vote electoral system may have benefitted the People’s Party by encouraging voters to cast a party list vote for the party while casting a district vote for one of the larger parties, consistent with strategic voting. Further analysis shows that People’s Party supporters that intended to vote for their party’s district candidate, and thus cast a sincere rather than strategic district vote, were less likely than other partisans to split their votes across two parties.

A banana republic? The effects of inconsistencies in the counting of votes on voting behavior

We examine whether local inconsistencies in the counting of votes influence voting behavior. We exploit the case of the second ballot of the 2016 presidential election in Austria. The ballot needed to be repeated because postal votes were counted carelessly in individual electoral districts (“scandal districts”). We use a difference-in-differences approach comparing election outcomes from the regular and the repeated round. The results do not show that voter turnout and postal voting declined significantly in scandal districts. Quite the contrary, voter turnout and postal voting increased slightly by about 1 percentage point in scandal districts compared to non-scandal districts. Postal votes in scandal districts also were counted with some greater care in the repeated ballot. We employ micro-level survey data indicating that voters in scandal districts blamed the federal constitutional court for ordering a second election, but did not seem to blame local authorities.

Comprehensive Retrospective Voting in Mixed Electoral Systems: Evidence from the 2016 Korean Legislative Election

AbstractPerformance-based retrospective voting is a fundamental mechanism of democracy. A good deal of scholarship has examined this electoral mechanism, but the extant studies have two omissions. First, there is little research that considers several retrospective evaluations together using an incumbent voting model. Second, there is little research that examines the difference in the effects of voters’ retrospective evaluations on two different ballots in mixed electoral systems. To fill these omissions, this article tests a comprehensive retrospective performance voting model in a mixed electoral system. Specifically, this article examines the effects of voters’ retrospective economic evaluations of economic performance at the national and personal levels, human rights, corruption, welfare protection, and foreign policy on vote choice for the incumbent party in the 2016 Korean legislative election in which voters had two ballots: one for the party list vote and one for the district vote. By using multinomial logistic regression models, this article finds that among the six retrospective evaluation categories, judgments of national economic performance at the national level, human rights, and foreign policy have a statistically significant impact on the likelihood of voting for the incumbent party in party list vote choice, whereas only voters’ evaluation of foreign policy matter in the district level vote decision. The results imply that Korean voters consider various aspects of government performance, such as the conditions of human rights and relationships with other countries, rather than just focusing on the economy. The retrospective voting behavior of Korean voters differs between party list and district level ballots.

How Effective Is Social Capital in Spreading Political Ideas? Evidence from Facebook Likess in the 2015 Queensland and 2017 Western Australian State Elections

How effective are new forms of social capital, such as social media, in spreading political ideas? We use Facebook page ‘likes’ as a measure of social capital, and votes received as a measure of performance, to examine the effectiveness of social capital in disseminating political ideas. To do so, we use data from two state elections in Australia - the 2015 general election in Queensland and the 2017 general election in Western Australia. Our main results suggest that for every additional one percentage point district share of Facebook likes that a candidate has, they receive an additional 0.15 percentage point district vote share. This result is robust to alternative ways of measuring Facebook likes and votes received and a range of different specifications. Using social media data, we also correctly predict the outcome of 70.95 percent of the seats in both elections. We show that Facebook likes represent a better predictor of election outcomes than either ratings of candidates’ beauty or competency.

Partisan Gerrymandering: Is There No Shame in It or Have Politicians Become Shameless?

Thirty years ago, the Supreme Court held that gerrymandering districts to favor one party discriminates against those who vote for the disadvantaged party and thus violates the Equal Protection Clause. But the justices have struggled to agree on a test. Although no one describes rigging a district map to give one party an unfair advantage as a good thing, some come close. And therein lies the rub. If partisan gerrymandering just isn’t that bad, it becomes hard to muster the political will to strike it down, even if virtually everyone agrees that some gerrymanders are unconstitutional. By granting certiorari in Gill v. Whitford – a case in which a three-judge district court struck down a state legislative district map as an unlawful partisan gerrymander – the Supreme Court may finally be ready to answer that question. Perhaps surprisingly, the fundamental question – how bad is partisan gerrymandering – has received little attention. This article shows that partisan gerrymanders are anathema to the ideal of American democracy. They produce precisely the type of unchecked decision-making that the Constitution sought to prevent. And they clash with the culture of American democracy that respects either (1) historical-boundary-based district voting or (2) proportionality between the percentage of voters who cast ballots for a party statewide and the percentage of representatives from that party in the legislature. A partisan gerrymander disrespects both of those legitimate goals. Accepting it as part and parcel of the political process would undermine the original understanding of a democratic republic embodied by the Constitution as well as the understandings of Americans throughout the nation’s history. This Article then looks to that history and culture to articulate a standard for assessing redistricting claims. Courts have struggled to draw the line separating permissible and impermissible partisan gerrymandering because no such line exists. District line drawing is not like the porridge in Goldilocks and the Three Bears – sometimes too hot or too cold, but somewhere in the middle is just right. The question is one of kind, not degree. Some types of district line-drawing accord with our heritage and some don’t. Legislators drawing a district map may take partisanship into account – just as they can take race into account – to further a legitimate objective of the democratic process. Our constitutional, legal, and democratic cultural history supports the two legitimate goals set out above – districts based on historical geographic boundaries or proportionality. A partisan advantage may legitimately arise from pursuing one of these goals, because the goal comports with our democratic heritage. By contrast, drawing lines that disrespect both historical geographic boundaries and the proportional will of all voters – as partisan gerrymandering does – has no rational basis in our shared history and thus fails to accord voters on the short end of the partisan gerrymander stick the equal protection of the law. No set of gerrymandering conduct exists such that drawing lines for the purpose of obtaining a small partisan advantage at the expense of historic boundaries and proportionality is legitimate while drawing lines to obtain a large advantage is illegitimate. Modern computer software enables the courts to analyze maps quickly to determine whether they objectively pursue either of the legitimate goals. When a map reveals disrespect for both and disproportionate results follow, a court should strike it down.

Staying sincere: an experimental analysis of non-strategic voting in South Korea

ABSTRACTUnder ideal conditions, when do voters switch from sincere to strategic voters? Despite a large literature on strategic voting and Duverger’s Law, few studies assess when individuals shift from sincere to strategic nor what factors may encourage or discourage defecting from one’s first choice. Through an experimental web survey analysing district voting in South Korea’s National Assembly, this study measures the effect of partisan cues and the margin of error. Not only did a non-negligible number of respondents remain sincere voters despite conditions favourable to strategic voting, but supporters of smaller parties and those without partisan identification were more likely to defect from their sincere vote when given an additional prompt about the margin of error. The results suggest the contextual influence on the strategic vote calculus.

District Voter Turnout and Dyadic Representation in Congress

ABSTRACTOne of the most important tools by which citizens can influence their elected officials' behavior is through voting—the electoral connection. Previous studies demonstrate that the opinions of voters are better represented than the opinions of nonvoters within an electoral jurisdiction, but we do not know whether jurisdictions with higher levels of aggregate voter turnout are better represented by their elected officials compared to those with lower levels of turnout. Using data compiled across five congressional sessions (2003–2013), this article investigates whether congressional districts with higher voter turnout are better represented by their member of Congress (MC). We find evidence that district voter turnout positively conditions the relationship between district opinion and MC voting behavior even after accounting for the possible effects of electoral competition and district income and racial demographics. In addition, we uncover evidence that partisan differences exist in this conditioning effect such that higher voter turnout enhances roll call voting responsiveness among Democratic MCs but not among Republican MCs. These findings suggest that congressional districts as a whole benefit from a political responsiveness standpoint when more of their constituents turn out to vote and contribute to literatures on political representation, political participation, democratic accountability, and the U.S. Congress.

The Effects of District Magnitude on Voting Behavior

Is there more sincere voting in multi-member districts than in single-member districts? Existing research on this question is inconclusive, at least in part because it is difficult with observational data to isolate the effect of district magnitude on voting behavior independently from voters’ preferences or the number of parties. Hence, we investigate this issue in a laboratory experiment, where we vary district magnitude while keeping the distribution of voters’ preferences and the number of parties constant. We find that voting for the preferred party (sincere voting) increases with district magnitude. This is consistent with existing findings from observational data. We also discover a surprising result: a high incidence of “frontrunner” voting, which cannot be easily explained by existing research.

Does descriptive representation lead to social desirability bias? Over-reporting of voting among blacks and Latinos in the United States

This study explores whether black and/or Latino respondents are more likely to over-report voting in districts with US House candidates of the same race/ethnicity and whether the overstating of political participation is contingent on shared partisanship between the candidate and the respondent. We test these relationships using vote-validated data from the 2006 and 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. We find that blacks and Latinos are not more likely to over-report voting in districts with descriptive candidates regardless of whether the candidate and respondent share the same party identification or not. The results of this study provide support for previous and future studies linking descriptive representation to higher levels of black and Latino turnout using non-voter validated data.

Is Duverger’s law valid?

I show that, contrary to Duverger’s law, three or four parties receive at least 5 per cent of the votes in most districts in British and Canadian elections. This is so because the voters and the parties are not necessarily short-term utility maximizers as the theory assumes. Still, the basic intuition that fewer parties obtain significant support under single-member district plurality elections is absolutely correct. Duverger also makes an important contribution instressing the impact of electoral formulas, a fruitful antidote to the exclusive emphasis that recent research has given to district magnitude.