Electoral Strategies Research Articles

The Election of 1860: "A Campaign Fraught with Consequences." by Michael F. Holt

Reviewed by: The Election of 1860: "A Campaign Fraught with Consequences."by Michael F. Holt Adam Chamberlain The Election of 1860: "A Campaign Fraught with Consequences."By Michael F. Holt. American Presidential Elections. ( Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017. Pp. xvi, 256. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-7006-2487-4.) Michael F. Holt's book sets out to show how slavery, long considered the prime issue in the 1860 election, did not play that prominent a role in the campaign. Instead, the James Buchanan administration's incompetence and corruption were the targets of Republican efforts to win over former Millard Fillmore voters; only among Democrats, specifically in the South, did fears about the end of slavery motivate voting. To make this case, Holt begins with an exploration of the Republican and Democratic Parties in the run-up to nominations. He then launches into very thorough descriptions of the nominating conventions that ultimately selected Stephen A. Douglas, John Bell, Abraham [End Page 695]Lincoln, and John C. Breckinridge. Finally, the last two chapters cover the campaigns, with an emphasis on party messaging in the different regions of the country and how citizens voted. Holt does an excellent job of stressing the lack of importance of slavery to Republican appeals in 1860, while also casting light on southern Democrats' concerns that a Republican victory signaled strong anti-South sentiment throughout the North and an end to southern influence in the national government. The author's use of a variety of newspapers and primary source materials makes clear that Republicans running the campaign were focused more on Buchanan's corruption than on other issues, while Douglas and Breckinridge traded barbs over slavery. Bell's campaign reflected the belief that issues of slavery extension had just recently been settled once more and that a true Union Party, national in scope, was a better option than the Republicans and sectional Democratic candidates. Overall, the argument is well supported by the evidence presented. However, there is a danger in relying too heavily on newspaper articles and campaign rhetoric for understanding how white southerners perceived the Republican Party and how Republican leaders perceived the South. Even if not centerpieces of the campaign, the important roles played by former Liberty Party and Free-Soil Party men in the Republican Party signified that, of any party, it was the one decidedly opposed to slavery. Such a point could be lost on average voters in a campaign, but southern leaders and activists in the Democratic Party were certainly aware of this situation. As such, southerners could still perceive the Republicans as the greatest threat to slavery and the so-called southern way of life. Likewise, Republican Party elites generally understood that nominating a vocal abolitionist, or someone perceived to be one, would not play well with northern audiences. Most leaders were willing to moderate their rhetoric to win an election—a perfectly understandable electoral strategy for any political party. Yet the fact that Republican editors and leaders avoided the discussion of slavery and its extension, and often avoided discussions of southern power, in news reports and private campaign correspondence only shows that their focus was on the issues needed to win the presidential election. Regardless of the abolitionist sentiment of the population, leaders shaped outcomes in politics and led opinion—and if these Republican leaders still harbored concerns about the South and slavery, the ascendance of this regional party meant trouble to Democrats and to southerners. Therefore, slavery was still present in the campaign. Silence on the subject did not indicate that it played a marginal role, as questions of how to treat the subject, and what other issues to engage, shaped the campaign strategies of all political parties. Still, this criticism is more about perspective than content. Holt does an excellent job describing how the Buchanan administration's failings were front and center during the 1860 presidential campaign, and this well-written and well-researched book should appeal to a broad range of scholars. [End Page 696] Adam Chamberlain Coastal Carolina University Copyright © 2019 The Southern Historical Association

Territory, Class, and Kinship: A Case Study of an Indonesian Regional Election

This article examines electoral strategies used by candidates in regional elections in new Indonesian jurisdictions. It uses the 2017 regional election in Maybrat, West Papua as a case study. It explores the candidates’ strategies and motivations in context, as well as their results. Research indicates that similar election strategies were used by candidates, such as exploiting elements of territory, class, and kinship. However, their emphases differed: the losing candidate had positioned class solidarity centrally in their campaigns, while the victorious candidate had emphasized spatial solidarity. This research also observed the exploitation of latent tensions over the location of the regional capital in the new jurisdiction of Maybrat, where the creation of new resources, services, and public offices intensified long‐standing contestations. Ultimately, distancing themselves from electoral logics that target individual voters, the candidates in Maybrat targeted specific groups, a strategy representative of Papuan society’s communal tendencies.

Is autophagy an elective strategy to protect neurons from dysregulated cholesterol metabolism?

The balance of autophagy, apoptosis and necroptosis is crucial to determine the outcome of the cellular response to cholesterol dysregulation. Cholesterol plays a major role in regulating the properties of cell membranes, especially as regards their fluidity, and the regulation of its biosynthesis influences the shape and functions of these membranes. Whilst dietary cholesterol can easily be distributed to most organs, the central nervous system, whose membranes are particularly rich in cholesterol, mainly relies on de novo synthesis. For this reason, defects in the biosynthesis of cholesterol can variably affect the development of central nervous system. Moreover, defective synthesis of cholesterol and its intermediates may reflect both on structural cell anomalies and on the response to inflammatory stimuli. Examples of such disorders include mevalonate kinase deficiency, and Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, due to deficiency in biosynthetic enzymes, and type C Niemann-Pick syndrome, due to altered cholesterol trafficking across cell compartments. Autophagy, as a crucial pathway dedicated to the degradation of cytosolic proteins and organelles, plays an essential role in the maintenance of homeostasis and in the turnover of the cytoplasmic material especially in the presence of imbalances such as those resulting from alteration of cholesterol metabolism. Manipulating the process of autophagy can offer possible strategies for improving neuronal cell viability and function in these genetic disorders.

An Energy-Optimization Clustering Routing Protocol Based on Dynamic Hierarchical Clustering in 3D WSNs

An important issue in the three-dimensional (3D) wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is sensor energy optimization. To alleviate this issue, we introduce a new 3D spherical network structure model, and by combining the original energy consumption model to construct a new method to determine the optimal number of clusters and balance the total energy consumption. Since the different sizes of the clusters are generated by traditional hierarchical clustering, it causes unbalanced energy consumption in the network. To alleviate this problem, we adopt an improved dynamic hierarchical clustering method and implement two strategies that include the following three contributions: the introduction of the distance similarity index to get a better clustering, a double cluster head (CH) strategy to reduce the load of a cluster head in a large cluster, and a node dormancy mechanism to balance the energy consumption of the network. In addition, we also propose the optimal cluster-head function to select the CH of each cluster in each round, and the optimal cluster-head function is constructed based on the residual energy and positions of the nodes. Finally, to optimize the CH election strategy, several parameters of the optimal cluster-head function are determined according to the network structure. The simulation results show that our routing protocol is more robust compared with four other protocols, which is of great significance for the application in 3D environment monitoring.

Estimation of the Percent of the Vote by Adjustment of Voter Turnout in Election Polls

유권자들의 올바른 투표행위에 기여하기 위하여 또는 후보나 정당의 적절한 선거전략 수립을 위하여, 선거여론조사를 통하여 신뢰성 있고 객관적인 정보를 확보하는 것은 매우 중요한 문제이다. 따라서 정당, 언론기관, 조사회사 등 관련 기관에서는 여론조사의 결과와 선거예측의 정확도 향상을 위해 지속적으로 노력해 왔다. Kim et al.(2017)에서는 선거여론조사에서 지지후보가 없다고 응답한 무응답층을 분류하여 득표율 예측의 정확도를 높일 수 있는지를 분석하였는데, 결과적으로 무응답층에 대하여 적절한 분류를 수행함으로써 득표율 추정의 정확도를 상당히 높일 수 있음을 확인한 바 있다. 본 연구에서는 특정 선거구(지역)에 대하여 전체 투표율이 주어져 있다는 조건 하에서 각 층(성, 연령대)별 투표율을 추정하는 방안을 제안하고, 투표율을 반영하여 득표율을 예측하는 절차를 제시하였다. 또한 2016년 20대 국회의원선거에 대한 여론조사에서 전화면접조사를 통해 얻어진 자료를 사용하여 사례 분석을 수행하였다.It is very important to obtain objective and credible information through election polls in order to contribute to the correct voting behavior of the voters or to establish appropriate election strategies for candidates or political parties. Therefore, many related organizations such as political parties, media organizations, and research institutions have been making efforts to improve the accuracy of the results of the polls and the election prediction. Kim et al. (2017) analyzed whether the non-response group responded that there is no support candidate in the election survey to increase the accuracy of the estimation of the vote rate. As a result, it has been confirmed that the accuracy of the estimation of the vote rate can be significantly improved by performing an appropriate classification on the non-response layer. In this study, we propose a method to estimate the turnout by each strata (sex, age group) under the condition that the total turnout rate is given for a specific district (region) and propose a procedure to predict the vote rate by reflecting the turnout. In addition, case studies were conducted using data gathered through telephone interviews for the 20th National Assembly elections in 2016.

From Keynesianism to the knowledge economy: the rise and fall of growth regimes

This essay explores the evolution of postwar growth regimes, understood as the economic and social policies used by governments to pursue economic growth in the developed democracies. It charts movement in growth regimes from an era of modernization stretching from 1950 to 1975, through an era of liberalization running from 1980 to the late 1990s, to a subsequent era of knowledge-based growth. It argues that the capacities of democratic governments to pursue specific growth regimes depend, not only on economic circumstances, but also on evolving electoral conditions, marked especially by changes in the cleavage structures conditioning partisan electoral strategies. The essay concludes by exploring the implications of contemporary electoral politics for the development of growth regimes appropriate to a knowledge economy.

The Never-ending Story: Czech Governments, Corruption and Populist Anti-Corruption Rhetoric (2010–2018)

Abstract Corruption is a phenomenon with significant effects – economically, politically and culturally. Corruption tends to be viewed negatively by the public. As such, anti-corruption rhetoric may be an ideal election strategy for individual political parties. Nevertheless, anti-corruption rhetoric does not necessarily translate into an actual anti-corruption policy. This study analyses the impact of anti-corruption rhetoric that does not reflect the actual practices of its speaker and has been used strategically to gain favour. My focus is on elections and the subsequent formation and exercise of government in the Czech Republic. I analyse how anti-corruption rhetoric directed at political opponents works as an election success strategy. At the same time, I show how electoral success, transformed into real political power, strengthens the ability of actors to engage in activities that amount to borderline or outright corruption, irrespective of any anti-corruption rhetoric.

When do they put all of their eggs in one basket? past election result, issue salience, and the nicheness of radical right-wing parties

ABSTRACTWhen do radical right-wing parties (RRPs) become more or less niche? In other words, when do they restrict their policy platform and emphasize their core issues (e.g. immigration) more or expand their policy platform incorporating other, particularly traditional socioeconomic issues? Using data on party manifestos and public opinion in Western Europe between 1980 and 2017, we find that in response to poor election results, the parties become more niche if the salience of their core issue (immigration) is high among party supporters, but become less niche if the salience is low. This result implies that if mainstream parties can influence the salience of particular issues, they can alter RRPs’ electoral strategy. The result also implies that RRPs will either maintain or even strengthen their niche party characteristics and compete primarily on immigration issues as long as immigration stays as a salient political issue.

External Factors Determining the Electoral Strategies of Political Parties in Multi-Level Systems

This article identifies the factors which determine the electoral strategies of political parties in multi-level systems and describes how they can influence these strategies. It particularly focuses on the two aspects: regionalisation and “nationalisation” (centralisation) of the strategies. In the first case, state-wide parties allow their regional branches to develop their own strategies, in the second one – the regional strategies are dominated by the strategies of statewide parties. The article shows the features of political systems that foster each of these cases, especially the way in which a multi-layered system is created (bottom-up, top-down), the relations between the state authorities at central and regional levels (connected, separated), electoral systems and cycles.

Electoral Strategy and Intergovernmental Transfers in Postwar Japan

Japanese distributive politics draws scholarly attention as a partial but powerful explanation of the LDP’s electoral dominance via the contention that the LDP rewarded its supporters and punished its opponents. But the empirical evidence disappears when intergovernmental transfers, which can be tracked to electoral constituencies, are examined. Using intergovernmental transfer data, this article tests four separate hypotheses.

Last ten years (2008-2018) of chiral ligand-exchange chromatography in HPLC: An updated review.

Chiral ligand-exchange chromatography is one of the elective strategies for the direct enantioresolution of small chelating compounds: amino acids, diamines, amino alcohols, diols, small peptides, etc. Unlike other methods, the interaction between chiral selector and analyte enantiomers is mediated by a cation, thus producing diastereomeric ternary complexes. Two main approaches are conventionally applied in chiral ligand-exchange chromatography. The first relies upon chiral stationary phases where the chiral selector is either covalently immobilized or physically adsorbed onto suitable packing materials (coated phases). In the second approach, chiral molecules are added to the eluent, thus generating chiral eluent systems. Among the advantages of chiral ligand-exchange chromatography, the generation of UV/vis-active metal complexes, and the use of commercially available or easy-to-synthesize chiral selectors, in combination to rather inexpensive achiral columns for coated phases and chiral eluents, are noteworthy. Besides amino acids and amino alcohols, other species have proven suitable for chiral ligand-exchange chromatography applications. Recently, the use of either chiral ionic liquids or micellar liquid chromatography systems as well as the successful off-column formation of diastereomeric complexes have expanded the selectivity profiles and application fields. All of these issues are touched in the review, shedding light to the contributions appeared in the last decade.

‘For the Many, Not the Few’: Strategising the Campaign Trail at the 2017 UK General Election

AbstractDuring the 2017 general election campaign, the Conservative and Labour leaders toured the country. While Theresa May operated a conventional approach, encapsulated by limited interactions with the public, Jeremy Corbyn participated in public rallies and appeared at music festivals. This article examines the strategic decisions underpinning leader visits in the 2017 campaign trail. It finds that May and Corbyn’s electoral strategies had more in common than at first sight. The article adds to existing studies by using new interview data from local party campaigners to understand visit organisation and impact on the local campaign. It also makes an important step towards unpicking the causal mechanism through which these visits may affect voter behaviour.

How and Why Armed Groups Participate in Elections

Armed actors are often involved in electoral politics, from the fusing of ballots and bullets in armed political parties to insurgents covertly backing politicians. We develop new concepts and theory to better understand these complex relationships between violent actors and democratic practice. We first offer a novel conceptualization of armed groups’ electoral strategies that systematically maps out variation in the organizational directness and public openness of groups’ involvement in elections. We then use comparative case studies to develop theory about the conditions under which each of these electoral strategies is most likely, and what can trigger changes between them. The interaction of armed groups’ power and expectations of popular support with governments’ policies of toleration or repression determines the strategies of electoral participation that groups pursue. These concepts and arguments lay the foundation for a systematic research agenda on when and how “normal” and armed politics become intertwined.

Presidential Campaigns in Latin America: Electoral Strategies and Success Contagion. By Taylor C. Boas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 276p. $105.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

Presidential Campaigns in Latin America: Electoral Strategies and Success Contagion. By Taylor C. Boas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 276p. $105.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

Social Networks and the Targeting of Vote Buying

The social networks of voters have been shown to facilitate political cooperation and information transmission in established democracies. These same social networks, however, can also make it easier for politicians in new democracies to engage in clientelistic electoral strategies. Using survey data from the Philippines, this article demonstrates that individuals with more friend and family ties are disproportionately targeted for vote buying. This is consistent with the importance of other social factors identified in the literature such as reciprocity, direct ties to politicians, and individual social influence. In addition, this article presents evidence supporting an additional mechanism linking voter social networks to the targeting of vote buying: social network–based monitoring. Voters with larger networks are both more sensitive to the ramifications of reneging on vote buying agreements and are primarily targeted for vote buying in contexts where monitoring is necessary.

Public issues or issue publics? The distribution of genuine political attitudes

AbstractThere is an inherent conflict between the political marketing model of humans and pioneering theories in electoral behavior research. While political marketing logic implies an issue-based and highly volatile voting behavior, voting theories conventionally assume that positional issues have little effect on how individuals vote, and so parties have little incentive to develop issue-based electoral strategies. However, few people would challenge the role that marketing now plays in the modern campaign process. How can we reconcile these theories? This paper revisits the role and impact of positional issues on voting behavior by testing whether specific issues affect different subgroups of voters as contended by the ‘issue-public’ theory. The results show that previous models underestimate issue voting. Once measurement accuracy is improved and the salience-based heterogeneity of issue effects is taken into consideration, positional issues have non-negligible effects on individual vote choice. Furthermore, salience-based heterogeneity is shown to explain better the variation in issue voting than heterogeneity based on political sophistication.

Regional elections in Russia: instruments of authoritarian legitimacy or instability?

This study examines three rounds of regional assembly and gubernatorial elections in Russia that took place in September 2015, 2016 and 2017. In particular, it examines the ways in which the regime has manipulated the elections to guarantee the victory of United Russia. The study shows that the Kremlin has adopted a new electoral strategy. Rather than engaging in the risky business of outright fraud during the vote count, which was an important factor in sparking mass protests against the regime, in the wake of the 2011 elections to the State Duma, the authorities have decided to concentrate their efforts on preventing opposition parties and candidates from registering for the elections. Whilst other forms of electoral malpractice have continued to be practiced, such as coercing or bribing voters to turn out and vote for United Russia, promoting “carousel voting” (multiple voting by groups of mobilised citizens), or ballot stuffing, much more focus has been paid in these elections on manipulating the registration process in favour of United Russia. As is clearly demonstrated, scores of opposition candidates and party lists, have been prevented from competing because of problems with their registration documents. However, whilst this strategy has helped United Russia win large majorities in all of the gubernatorial and assembly elections, it has also created lacklustre and predictable contests, and this in turn has led to a sharp decline in turnout, particularly in the gubernatorial elections. There is a real danger that these low levels of turnout may gradually erode the legitimacy of United Russia, embolden the opposition, and threaten the stability of the regime.

Making the economic case for independence: The Scottish National Party’s electoral strategy in post-devolution Scotland

ABSTRACTThis article examines the strategic behaviour of the Scottish National Party (SNP) in regional elections from 1999 to 2016. It builds on recent work that has theorized the kind of strategic tools regionalist parties have at their disposal in electoral competition, and the factors expected to determine the strategic choices these parties make. An in-depth case study of the SNP describes when and explores why the party makes strategic choices in an effort to bolster its electoral support in post-devolution Scotland. The analysis finds (i) that the SNP has consistently sought to ‘frame’ the issue of independence in economic terms, by advancing an economic case for separating Scotland from the UK and (ii) that this strategic approach is the result of competing constraints internal and external to the party. These findings suggest that the strategic behaviour of regionalist parties in electoral competition is more sophisticated than expected by extant theoretical accounts.

Beclouding Party Position as an Electoral Strategy: Voter Polarization, Issue Priority and Position Blurring

Why do political parties present vague positions? We suggest that voter polarization provides them incentives to present either clear or vague positions, and the choice between these two is determined by the priority of an issue for the parties. We find that facing voter polarization, Western European political parties present clearer positions on an issue when it is a prime issue for them, but blur their positions when it is a secondary issue. Then, position blurring gives different implications to party systems with different degrees of issue dimensionality (such as American vs Western European party systems). The results also imply that political parties will respond to ongoing voter polarization on economic and immigration issues differently in the clarity of their position.

From regional politics to street demonstrations: Changes in the Iraqi Communist Party’s political strategies in the post-war era

Abstract This article analyses how the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) altered its political strategies in post-war Iraq. After the decline of the political presence, the ICP formed large alliances with small parties in the third round of local and national elections, opting to support candidates on a national scale; in doing so, the ICP achieved significant breakthrough. The party’s election strategy not only led to the ICP’s success but also to the overall stabilization of Iraqi party politics. After the rise of ISIS, the ICP overcame its ideological differences with Sadrist factions that similarly stood alongside the masses; pursuing large-scale demonstrations, the ICP found further opportunities to carry out its political activities. The ICP has thus been adroit in adapting its political strategies according to political and social circumstances. As Islamist groups have seized political power and religious sentiment has spread, the ICP might be seen as pursuing the best of strategies that remain available to it.