Election Time Research Articles

Who wins when? Election timing and descriptive representation

AbstractWe examine how the timing of local elections affects the success of minority candidates, who remain woefully underrepresented in public office. We build on research showing that concurrent elections narrow racial gaps in voter turnout and leverage changes in the timing of local elections in California. Our analysis shows that filling local offices in November of even years increases minority officeholding, at least for some groups. The results demonstrate how, when, and for whom election timing matters. Latinos gain most, potentially at the expense of White and, to a lesser degree, Black representation. An investigation of potential mechanisms suggests that these effects depend on group population size and the magnitude of the turnout changes. An increase in the number of co‐ethnic candidates running also appears to contribute to the representational benefits of on‐cycle elections. Finally, the effects are most pronounced during presidential elections, when turnout improvements are largest.

Early Childhood Education And Village Corruption: An Evidence From Indonesia

This study explores the relationship between early childhood education (ECE) exposure and corruptive behavior among village leaders in Indonesia, particularly in light of the decentralization efforts that began in 2014 with the Village Fund Initiative. The objective is to determine whether village leaders who were exposed to ECE in their early years are less prone to engage in corrupt practices when managing public funds. The research utilizes a staggered difference-in-difference approach, comparing corruption cases between leaders exposed to ECE and those who were not. The study collected data from the Indonesian village census (PODES) between 1993 and 2018, focusing on Java Island. The corruption cases were sourced from the Indonesian Supreme Court, specifically analyzing the behavior of village heads elected post-2014. The methodology allowed for a quasi-experimental design by leveraging the timing of village elections as a key variable. The results ECE exposure did not universally reduce corruption across the sample. In fact, corruption surged among early-treated groups who experienced the program in the 1990s, suggesting that ECE alone is not a strong deterrent to corruption. However, for later-treated groups, ECE exposure did lead to a reduction in corrupt behavior, pointing to an adaptation effect as village leaders observed peers being prosecuted for corruption. In conclusion, while early childhood education plays a role in shaping governance outcomes, its impact on reducing corruption is nuanced. The findings suggest that integrating anti-corruption education into the ECE curriculum could strengthen governance at the village level, particularly when combined with robust law enforcement mechanisms

Greek political leaders on TikTok: crafting visual bonds in election and non-election times

Through social media platforms (SMPs), politicians share professional, personal, and even private information in an effort to connect with both influential personalities and ordinary individuals. Specifically, politicians’ use of TikTok can be seen as a strategy to generate “visual flows” of professional, personal, and private moments aimed at crafting visual bonds with TikTok users. This research comparatively analyzes how the leaders of the three largest political parties in Greece -New Democracy, SYRIZA, and PASOK-Kinal- shape their public images through TikTok video posts. The analysis covers their activity on the platform from its inception until mid-March 2024 (March 15, 2024), including the recent double general elections held in Greece in late May and late June 2023. The study explores how Greek politicians use TikTok, with a focus on platform-specific strategies that convey authenticity and intimacy to users. It also compares communication tactics across political leaders and electoral periods, integrating the findings with previous research on Instagram. The communication strategies that seek to enhance the “ordinariness” aspect of politicians appear to have a significant positive effect on viewer engagement with TikTok videos, while the presentation of political activities appears to have a negative correlation to user engagement. Overall, this research aims to contribute to the literature by offering a nuanced understanding of how politicians utilize TikTok to shape their public image, engage with audiences, and navigate the complexities of digital communication in the political sphere.

The transition to direct mayoral elections in clientelistic environments: Causal public spending and service delivery effects

We examine the impact of the transition to direct mayoral elections on district spending and household public service access in Indonesia during a period of momentous national democratic reform. We leverage the arguably exogenous timing of direct local elections to specify a staggered difference-in-differences model, which we estimate using the latest methods to plausibly identify causal effects. We find that the transition to direct elections led to a consistent and large decline in capital spending in both pre- and post-election years. We also determine that the transition resulted in a moderate decrease in household service access in the post-election period. Pre-election capital spending impacts are a function of both general disruptions associated with the transition and emerging clientelism. Service access effects are completely explained by the relative extent of clientelism across districts. We conclude that the local democratic transition in Indonesia had a mostly negative impact on key spending and service outcomes, at least in the short-run and for those districts in which clientelistic practices were especially pronounced.

Local Democracy in America: How Access, Competition, and Place Shape Turnout in Mayoral Races

The vast majority of the roughly half-million elected officials in the U.S. occupy local offices, however, research examining how they get elected to remains scant. The present study examines turnout in local elections, focusing on the effects of electoral rules, the competitiveness of local races, and whether and how place matters. Based on a sample of roughly 10,000 mayoral elections, this study represents the most systematic empirical analysis of local turnout to date. While we find substantial differences in turnout across rural towns, suburbs, and central cities, these differences are largely explained by electoral and contextual factors that are unevenly distributed across the local landscape. Though election timing is far and away the most important factor, uncontested mayoral races, local elections in states with restrictive voting laws as well as those mid-sized municipalities are associated with significantly lower turnout.

The Government Financial Advantage of Early Elections: Evidence from UK MP Candidate Spending

In many parliamentary democracies, incumbents retain the right to call early elections. This is thought to provide incumbent governments with an advantage due to the ability to time elections to favorable economic conditions. This article explores an additional incumbency advantage of early elections. Due to information asymmetry about election timing, government parties can better plan fundraising in early elections years compared to non-government parties, which gives government parties a relative financial advantage. This proposition is tested on campaign spending data from over 50,000 British parliamentary candidates 1945–2019. The results support the argument. Government party candidates gain a relative financial advantage in early elections years compared to scheduled election years. The effect is found only for non-incumbent candidates and was eliminated by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011, which removed government early election calling. The results suggest that government election calling power provides incumbent government parties with a relative financial advantage.

Self-reported Ethnicity Changes over Time: A Population Level Study using Public Voter Databases

ObjectivesAdministrative databases such as voter registries contain a wealth of information about a large proportion of a population. This is especially true when longitudinal information about individuals is available, such as changes in their names, addresses, or self-reported ethnic attributes. Apparent changes in ethnic attributes might be due to perceptions of majority evaluations of ethnic groups. In this project, we analysed snapshots of a publicly available US voter database from 2015 to 2022, exploring if and how recent presidential elections impacted changes in voters' self-reported ethnic attributes. ApproachUsing bi-monthly snapshots of a publicly available US voter database from 2015 to 2022, we generated cohorts by linking active voters during seven twelve-month periods (2015/16 to 2021/22). These seven time periods included one mid-term and two presidential elections, and four control time spans before, between, and after these elections. We compared changes in self-reported ethnic attributes of voters during the times of elections versus the control time periods. ResultsPreliminary results reveal a substantial change to self-reported ethnic attributes during the periods leading to an election. A majority of such changes are by individuals from a specific ethnic group choosing not to report an ethnicity, an indication of their preference to not disclose ethnicity-related sensitive information. ConclusionsWe have shown how a publicly available voter database can be used to explore how self-reported ethnic attributes are modified by individual voters over time, and how the prevalence of such changes is influenced by political events such as presidential elections.

Total elbow replacement in England: a protocol for analysis of National Joint Registry and Hospital Episode Statistics data

IntroductionPrimary total elbow replacement (TER) services in England are being restructured with the goal of centralising care to specialised centres. It is important to monitor the impact of this service redesign. This protocol outlines an intended analysis to provide detailed descriptions of the patients who are receiving primary TER, where and by whom TER is being performed, and what the current surgical practices for TER are in England before the reconfiguration.MethodsThis analysis will use the National Joint Registry (NJR) elbow dataset and link it with NHS England Hospital Episode Statistics-Admitted Patient Care (HES-APC). It will include eligible patients from the start of the NJR elbow dataset in April 2012 to December 2022. The main objective is to determine the incidence of TER in England. Age-sex standardised rates will be calculated for groups including different ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds, using the mid-year population data provided by the Office for National Statistics. This planned analysis will summarise patient characteristics such as age, sex, body mass index (BMI), hand dominance, American Society of Anaesthesiologists (ASA) grade, indication for TER, socioeconomic status, and patient co-morbidities. It will also examine implant fixation type, classification, brand/type, and changes over time in implant types used in England. Additionally, it will explore the characteristics and volume of the surgeons and hospitals providing primary TER services, including the grade of the primary surgeons, funding source for surgery, and admission type. The analysis will cover the number of procedures performed by surgeons and hospitals annually in England and in each region of England. Finally, the planned analysis will summarise the elective wait time, postoperative length of stay, and any serious adverse events or re-admissions within 30 and 90 days after the TER.DiscussionThis protocol describes the first deep dive analysis into the NJR elbow dataset to describe the incidence of TER surgery in England and the characteristics of patients who are receiving it. This analysis will summarise current primary TER practices in England before service reconfigurations. The impact of reconfiguration can be monitored by comparing future practice to the outcomes from this study.Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT06355011. Registered 02 April 2024, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT06355011.

Predicting scandal

Despite its salience in modern politics, scandal has only recently been treated as a subject of inquiry in political economy. Most of the literature has focused on scandal’s effects on electoral outcomes, while a theoretical literature on endogenous scandal has offered predictions and hypotheses that remain largely untested. This paper uses an original dataset of U.S. Congressional scandals to test some of those predictions. Special place is given to the role of opposition research by political opponents and the strategic timing of scandal release. Despite persuasive theoretical arguments in the literature as to factors that might affect scandal, we find the only meaningfully significant predictor of scandal incidence to be election timing.

The Dynamics of Electoral Manipulation and Institutional Trust in Democracies: Election Timing, Blatant Fraud, and the Legitimacy of Governance.

This paper explores the dynamic relationship between electoral manipulation and popular trust in political institutions. Governments often manipulate election results by resorting to electoral fraud. They also tilt the electoral field by opportunistically deciding when to hold elections, in other words, election timing maneuvering. How do these two different types of electoral manipulation affect citizens' trust in the government, legislature, and election management bodies (EMBs)? We suggest that although the short-term effects of election timing manipulation are unclear due to its ambiguous nature as an electioneering strategy, substantial electoral margins created by timing maneuvering facilitate smooth decision-making, leading to boosting trust in the government and legislature over the long run. In contrast, as electoral fraud is an unambiguous form of manipulation, it may undermine trust in the government and parliament, although such effects may not last. By combining an original dataset of election timing with existing survey data comprising 335,000 citizens from fifty-eight democratic countries, we find evidence in support of our theoretical expectations.

Fencing Training with Reaction Time Lights

Authors Rafael Barañano-Alcaide Msc, PhD student for Complutense University of Madrid.(Spain). Corresponding author . rafabara@ucm.es Dr. Manuel Sillero-Quintana, Titular professor of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Faculty of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences (INEF), Sports Department, Madrid, (Spain). Dr. Ricardo-Bernardez, Titular professor of optometry department of the University Complutense of Madrid.(Spain). Jimena Barañano-Perez, student of I.E.S Luis de Gongora of Córdoba (Spain). Rut Gonzalez-Jiménez Msc, PhD student for Complutense University of Madrid.(Spain). Abstract Objective: evaluate different reaction times in fencing training with reaction time lights Method: This manuscript proposes four specific exercises for evaluating the simple reaction time (SRT), the elective reaction time (ERT), the go/no-go response time (G/NG) and the decision decision-making after lunge (DML), march (DMM) and braking (DMB) in fencers. The sample consisted of 48 fencers (22 males and 17 females; age: 21 ± 13 years) from several fencing clubs in the region of Andalusia, competing at amateur (10 athletes), regional (17 athletes), national (7 athletes), and international (5 athletes) in the three official fencing weapons: Epee (E), Saber (S), and Foil (F). The exercises were developed for the Queling Sport lighting system, connected by Bluetooth with the ReactionX android application, which controlled the activation of the lights and recorded the reaction time and the correction of the execution for each trial. Results: The results by gender did not show significant differences. Considering the results by weapon, the foil fencers were fastest than saber fencers, in all the exercises, but they were only significantly faster in the DML and DMM exercises. The performance in all the exercises was directly related with the competition level of the fencer, but only significantly better in foil fencers than in sable fencers when the exercise required decision-making processes. Conclusions: We propose a reference scale to evaluate the perceptive ability of the fencers that could be applied in talent detection processes and for evaluating the specific perceptive ability of the fencers.

Legal and Ethical Issues in the Constitutional Court Decision Concerning Minimum Age Limits for Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates

This article aims to explain the basic considerations of Constitutional Court Judges in deciding case Number.90/PUU-XXI/2023 and analyze the existence of controversial issues in this decision. The background to this writing is a decision by the Constitutional Court which is considered unusual. There are new things out of the ordinary in deciding cases and the momentum approaching the 2024 general election has become a sensitive and interesting study. The research method used in this writing is a normative juridical method with a legal philosophy approach. This is in accordance with the main problem of analyzing the judge’s decision from a philosophical perspective. Material in the form of library data in the form of statutory regulations and scientific works related to the research theme. The results of the research show that there are several basic reasons for judges in deciding this case, such as political rights and the time for the general election which is getting closer. Apart from that, the decision of the Constitutional Court contains ethical issues in it, because in the formation process it was carried out by judges who had been legally declared to have committed ethical violations.

Do (too many) elections depress participation? How the position, frequency and nature of domestic ballots affect turnout in European Parliament elections

In Europe, the multiplication of elections makes the election calendar a decisive issue given the decreasing participatory trend. Turnout is expected to be higher in simultaneous elections, while it lessens if several elections are held over a short period. The saliency of the preceding ballot may also affect participation in the next one. In this article, we argue that these temporal effects are crucial for European Parliament elections due to their second-order nature. We analyse how the position, frequency and nature of domestic ballots affect European Parliament elections turnout since 1979. Our results indicate that the participation level is less affected by the timing of elections than by their overall frequency. The type of preceding election also matters, although not the second-order nature per se.

Political uncertainty and stock price crash risk: Insights from state-elections in an emerging market

Exploiting staggered state elections across Indian states as exogenous political events which amplify political uncertainty, we evidence that political uncertainty increases stock price crash risk. Results, aligning with an information asymmetry channel, suggest that political uncertainty around the time of state elections induces managers to hoard bad news, fearing that uncertainty regarding election outcomes will lead to investor selling. Eventually, hoarded bad news is released, causing a stock price crash. Our findings are robust to an array of checks and addressing potential endogeneity concerns. Further, our identified positive association between political uncertainty and crash risk is more pronounced among firms that are smaller, have lower capital intensity, are leveraged, as well as headquartered in prominent states, dependent on public resources, and not politically connected.

Decision-Making Time Analysis for Assessing Processing Speed in Athletes during Motor Reaction Tasks.

Reaction time (RT) is a widely used measure for testing physical performance in motor tasks. This study focused on assessing the processing speed in athletes. Twenty-five healthy volunteers were assigned to the control (n = 16) or athletes groups (n = 9). They were evaluated during motor reaction tasks based on visual stimuli and three difficulty conditions. Physiological measures were obtained from motion capture and electromyography recordings of several muscles. Two RT phases, decision-making (DMK) and electromechanical delay (EMD), were used to analyze the processing speed. The results show significant RT differences between groups. The athletes were ~30% faster compared to the control group. Despite the fact that all participants were right-handed, RT did not show any differences between hands performances in any group. However, DMK time revealed significant differences between the hands. Controls showed a longer DMK time for the right-hand election, ~20% more than the left, while athletes showed no such disparity. These findings reveal that quantifying the decision-making component of reaction time is crucial to assessing processing speed in sport. This approach could facilitate the monitoring of adaptations in both motor-cognitive and neuromuscular processes. The theoretical implications presented in this study offer perspectives on handedness research.

Fiscal Policy, Government Ideology, and Economic Activity: Evidence from OECD Countries

AbstractThis study explores the role played by a country's political environment in the origin and effect of government spending. Using a rich data set that contains time‐varying ideological party positions, I show that both government ideology and the timing of elections are key determinants of government spending shocks and Granger‐cause government spending shocks estimated from traditional structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models that ignore political considerations. I find that the magnitude of the spending multiplier depends on the political context: highly polarized countries have smaller multipliers relative to countries with a low degree of polarization, and established democracies have smaller multipliers than younger democracies.

The effects of election timing on national and subnational turnout in Canada

ABSTRACT Where a considerable volume of work has been spent looking at the effects of voter fatigue in multi-level democracies, few work has looked at Canada as a unique case. Leveraging the specificity of the Canadian federation – level-specific party systems and electoral cycles – we show that there exists a strong and significant voter fatigue effect such that electoral turnout is lower in early, ‘snap’ elections and increases as does the time in weeks between elections, wherever the level at play. This is particularly important given that the stochastic nature of provincial and federal elections in Canada induces Canadians to go to the polls frequently – perhaps in part explaining the country’s turnout decline since the mid-1940s.

Mucciaroni의 모형을 활용한 교육감의 위상 변동 연구: 서울시 교육감을 중심으로

In this study, using Mucchiaroni's (1995) Interest Group Standing Changes Model, the changes in the superintendent's status after the straight line system were analyzed, focusing on the issue context and institutional context.
 The superintendent's fortunes was acquired over a long period of time through a process of rise and maintenance. In addition, while the issue context was both hospitable and unhospitable, the institutional context remained relatively hospitable. Both the institutional and issue contexts centered on efforts to curtail the superintendent's interests.
 In the institutional context, the lack of capacity of policymakers was found to be favorable to the position of superintendents, and the different timing of presidential, parliamentary, and superintendent elections was found to be favorable. It was also found that the fact that the institutional context could affect the superintendent's fortunes was related to the attention of new alternatives, that the relative importance of the institutional context should be noted, and that discussions on the target population's own fortune change were necessary.

Long-term trends in international medical electives fees: a database mining study.

Abroad medical electives are recognized as high-impact practice and considered a necessity to provide global health training. As of recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and its related travel restrictions prohibited most international elective activities. Another important barrier to abroad electives that received comparably little attention is elective and application fees, which - combined - may be as high as $5000 per month, and may prevent students with limited financial resources from applying for an international elective. Elective fees have never been systematically analyzed and trends in teaching and application fees have rarely been subject to dedicated scientific investigations. Using data from two large elective reports databases, the authors addressed this gap in the literature. The authors analyzed trends in abroad elective fees within the last 15 years in some of the most popular Anglo-American elective destinations among students from Germany, including the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of South Africa, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The authors identified n = 726 overseas elective reports that were uploaded between 2006 and 2020, of which n = 438 testimonies met the inclusion criteria. The United Kingdom and Australia were the most popular elective destinations (n = 123 and n = 113, respectively), followed by the Republic of South Africa (n = 104) and the United States of America (n = 44). Elective fees differed substantially-depending on the elective destinations and time point. Median elective fees were highest in the United States of America (€ 1875 for a 4-week elective between 2018-2020), followed by the Republic of South Africa (€ 400) and Australia (€ 378). The data also suggests an increasing trend for elective fees, particularly in the United States. Rising fees warrant consideration and a discussion about the feasibility of reciprocity and the bidirectional flow of students in bidirectional exchange programs.

Issue of ‘One Nation, One Election’ in Indian Perspective

This research examines the potential impacts—both positive and negative—of introducing simultaneous elections across India, known as "One Nation, One Election." This proposed change aims to synchronise national, state, and local election timings to reduce frequent election cycles. The analysis shows that synchronised elections could save significant costs for state and central governments by reducing expenses related to election administration, security, and disruptions in governance. Estimated annual savings could exceed ₹45 billion. The effect on state governments varies; while national issues might overshadow local concerns, state administrations could benefit from more governance-focused time rather than electioneering. This might decrease voter fatigue but could limit expressing dissatisfaction with state governments at different times. From an industry standpoint, synchronised elections offer more stable policies and less political uncertainty. Overall, simultaneous elections promote better governance focus and enhance political and economic stability. The paper provides a comprehensive evaluation based on evidence of the expected pros, cons, costs, and benefits.