Electoral Politics Research Articles

FURTHER LIGHT on LANCASTER’S LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

This article builds on the foundations provided by the History of Parliament Trust, utilising previously unconsidered documents from the papers of the Dukes of Hamilton to chart and analyse the conduct of parliamentary elections in later eighteenth-century Lancaster. It shows that these elections were more contentious than previously thought; the full range of political issues at play in these elections, and the engagement of the freemen electorate with these; and forms of electoral management and organisation in use that were not known in the borough until now. It places these new insights in the context of Lancaster’s electoral politics through the long eighteenth-century, and draws out developments in this period that played an important role in the borough’s nineteenth-century elections.

Understanding of Hybrid Political System of Islamic Republic Iran: The Case Study of General Election 2024

The Islamic Republic of Iran possesses a hybrid political system. It encompasses both elements of democracy and Islamic theocracy. As a unique model of the Islamic governmental system, the political system in Iran rests on dual sources of legitimacy. The objective of this paper is to examine the voter behaviour and the result of the 2024 elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran as well as to study the impact of president death on the election schedule. This election recorded the lowest turnout in history. The voter behaviour, attitude, and concerns towards Iranian politics and electoral politics also studied. The factors that caused low turnout is also discussed. The data for conducting this research is collected from journals, articles, official websites, and other secondary sources. The study concluded that the hope of no political and social change in Iran exploits the voters and that’s the main reason of low turnout in elections 2024. This study recommends that Iran’s government should focus to make electoral process modern, and policies should be flexible.

Ghana’s 2020 electoral politics: an assessment of the electoral commission

Ghana’s 2020 electoral politics: an assessment of the electoral commission

LGBTQ+ Sociopolitical Engagement: Examining the Role of House Ball Community Involvement and LGBTQ+ Community Connection.

Recent events such as the Black Lives Matter movement, COVID-19, and political elections have highlighted the power of a socially and politically engaged society. One under-researched cultural pillar at the core of sociopolitical resistance for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people of color (POC) has been the House Ball Community, a dynamic subculture made up of intricate social networks. This study uses data collected for the Social Justice Sexuality Project (N = 246) to examine LGBTQ+ community connection and House Ball Community involvement as predictors of LGBTQ+ and intersectional LGBTQ+ sociopolitical engagement. Two continuous variables, community connection and sociopolitical engagement (consisting of separate scales about LGBTQ+ individuals and LGBTQ+ POC), were included in the analysis. Multivariate linear regression analyses were performed to examine the relationships between these variables. While community connection was significantly associated with both scales of sociopolitical engagement, House Ball involvement was only associated with intersectional LGBTQ+ sociopolitical engagement. Relative to community connection, House Ball involvement was more strongly associated with intersectional LGBTQ+ sociopolitical engagement. Findings suggest that House Ball involvement may influence behavior for LGBTQ+ POC. Authors discuss implications for intersectionality in social movements and culturally responsive direct, community, and systems-level social work practice within the current U.S. sociopolitical landscape.

RHETORICS OF POLITICAL SELF ACRONYM ADVERTISING

<span lang="EN-US">This study aims to reveal the form of rhetoric of self-acronyms on the 2015 political elections in Central Java. Through this research, we can find out the form of rhetoric of the self-acronym used by the regent/mayor candidate partner in the 2015 <em>Pilkada </em>political advertisement. To answer questions and research needs, researchers analyzed the research data in the form of banners and billboards. The 2015 elections in Central Java through observation techniques and referring to the notes on the fragments of the advertising discourse which are allegedly statements that are a form of rhetoric of self-acronyms. Conclusions in this study are that there are acronyms that function as abbreviators and function as slogans. Acronyms that are classified as name abbreviators (initialization), namely the words </span><span lang="EN-US">Asri, Wali, Si Bagus, Mukti, Jati, Nasir Jos, Sukun, Ada, Nurani, Suko, Aman To, Mae, Harjo, Hati Mulya, Si Winner, dan Harus<span>. While those classified as slogans are </span>Dadi, Karismatik, Super Sumeh, Manis Bersyukur, dan Pasti Harum.</span>

Book Review: Evangelicals and Electoral Politics in Latin America: A Kingdom of This World

Book Review: Evangelicals and Electoral Politics in Latin America: A Kingdom of This World

Prognostics of deepfakes in electoral politics

La desinformación y las noticias falsas tienen efectos nocivos sobre el funcionamiento del sistema electoral democrático provocando la amplificación de la polarización política existente. Aunque los ultrafalsos pertenecen a la misma familia de engaño que las noticias falsas, hay algo completamente nuevo en ellos. Utilizando un método argumentativo, el objetivo de este artículo fue revelar las fuerzas invisibles que actúan tanto en el sistema perceptual humano como en las capturas algorítmicas manipulativas para evaluar los efectos que los ultrafalsos pueden provocar en situaciones políticas electorales. Se espera que las conclusiones obtenidas ayuden a comprender los dilemas en juego.

Elections and policies: Evidence from the Covid pandemic

AbstractThis paper explores the impact of political elections on public policies during the Covid pandemic, distinguishing between economic (supportive) and noneconomic (restrictive) policies in a panel of countries that held political elections during 3 years of pandemic, 2020–2022. An event study, controlling for the evolution of the pandemic in terms of Covid cases and deaths, as well as country and time fixed effects, reveals significant adjustments in the Covid‐related restrictive, lockdown‐type, policies but not in the Covid‐related economic support policies before political elections during the first half of the pandemic. The pre‐election policy adjustments included a gradual easing of the restrictions before elections and were driven by the changes in the restrictions that were more likely to directly affect the electorate, such as the restrictions on workplace closing, gatherings, and public events. The presence of the pre‐election restrictions adjustment is conditional on the economic and political characteristics of the country, such as the state of democracy, the degree of political competition, the overall restrictions stringency, and the income level.

Partisan and/or Gender Homophily: The Influence of Social Identity-Based Elaboration on Political Candidate Evaluation

Employing social identity theory, this study explores the interaction of gender and party variables in political elections. We used an experimental approach with a two (man/woman) x two (Republican/Democrat) design, in which participants viewed a political website, to assess the influence of shared and competing identities in candidate evaluations as well as the mechanisms of influence. Upholding previous findings, we found that a candidate’s partisan identity carried significantly more weight than their gender identity. Extending previous findings, results reveal that shared identities increase feelings of homophily, which biases elaboration about the candidate. This identity-biased elaboration influences attitudes and voting decisions.

Review on drivers of deforestation and associated socio-economic and ecological impacts

Relevance. Forests play a vital role in maintaining ecological balance and providing habitats, oxygen, and carbon sinks. However, deforestation resulting from mining, logging, infrastructure development, climate change, and agriculture is leading to their depletion.This paper aims to investigate the underlying factors driving deforestation and their socioeconomic and ecological consequences.Results and Discussion. Deforestation has resulted in the loss of 10 million hectares of global forest cover annually, with direct drivers including fires, logging, and converting forests to agricultural land. Indirect drivers encompass political elections, military conflicts, population density, and corruption. Economic growth, road expansion, and politics have exacerbated the pressure on forests, resulting in biodiversity loss. Deforestation is predicted to continue at a rate of 10 million hectares annually until 2025. To mitigate this issue, measures such as reducing emissions from deforestation, promoting sustainable forest management, and enhancing protected area management can be implemented. Furthermore, legal action should be pursued to address the issue of deforestation.

Estimating Disenfranchisement in US Elections, 1870–1970

While it is commonly understood that the poll tax and literacy tests, among other measures, were used effectively in the South to disenfranchise Black voters from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, what is not well known is how much those disenfranchising laws mattered. Specifically, how much did the enactment of poll taxes or literacy tests affect turnout in federal and state elections? And how much did those disenfranchising provisions dampen vote totals for Republican candidates in the South? Using the staggered implementation and removal of several disenfranchising policies over a 101-year period, we answer these questions and provide some precision to our collective knowledge of the “disenfranchising era” in American electoral politics. Overall, we find that the poll tax was the main driver of disenfranchisement in Southern elections, with literacy tests and the Australian ballot providing some secondary effects. We also find that ex-felon disenfranchisement laws were considerably more important—both in reducing turnout as well as Republican vote share in Southern elections—than has been traditionally understood. Finally, we unpack the “South” and unsurprisingly find that racial politics drove these results: the disenfranchising institutions were more impactful in states with a larger Black population share. Our results show the powerful effects of disenfranchising policies on electorates and electoral outcomes. We discuss these results in both their historical context as well as with a mind to the continuing use of disenfranchising provisions in law today.

Comparing political participation profiles in four Western European countries

AbstractMost studies of political participation have either focused on specific political behaviours or combined several behaviours into additive scales of institutional versus non‐institutional participation. Through a multi‐group latent class analysis of participation in 15 different political actions, conducted among citizens from four Western European countries, we identified five empirically grounded participant types that differ in their political engagement, socio‐demographic characteristics and political attitudes: ‘voter specialists’, ‘expressive voters’, ‘online participants’, ‘all‐round activists’ and ‘inactives’. While the same participant types were identified in all four countries, the proportion of citizens assigned to each type varies across countries. Our results challenge the claim that some citizens specialize in protest politics at the expense of electoral politics. Furthermore, our typological approach challenges previous findings on the individual characteristics associated with political (in)action.

Organisational, legal and socio-economic instruments of state regulation of the activities of political parties and election campaigns

Organisational, legal and socio-economic instruments of state regulation of the activities of political parties and election campaigns

The People’s Captain: Understanding Police Officers as an Electoral Brand

In Brazil, police officers have increasingly competed in elections, mirroring expanded roles in government for coercive agents in cases such as the United States, the Philippines, and Mexico. In this paper, I develop a theory of how voters perceive these candidates. The symbol of the police officer represents the abstract idea of order and stability, more than just a crime fighter. Corruption scandals and insecurity in Brazil and Latin America have given rise to “order” in response to the chaos of politics as usual as a compelling electoral brand. I therefore expect that voters associate police officer candidates with strong, decisive leadership, social conservatism, a strong commitment to the rule of law, honesty in government, and a weak commitment to democracy. An image-based conjoint experiment fielded to a representative sample of Brazilian voters ( N = 3,098) finds support for the theoretical framework, but respondents did not perceive the police officer candidate as less democratic than other professional profiles. The results help to inform our understanding of electoral politics in post-transition democratic regimes, demonstrating how armed agents of the state might remain popular and influential within the context of a consolidated democracy.

Analysis, Evaluation, and Future Directions on Multimodal Deception Detection

Multimodal deception detection has received increasing attention from the scientific community in recent years, mainly due to growing ethical and security issues, as well as the growing use of digital media. A great number of deception detection methods have been proposed in several domains, such as political elections, security contexts, and job interviews. However, a systematic analysis of the current situation and the evaluation and future directions of deception detection based on cues coming from multiple modalities seems to be lacking. This paper, starting from a description of methods and metrics used for the analysis and evaluation of multimodal deception detection on video, provides a vision of future directions in this field. For the analysis, the PRISMA recommendations are followed, which allow the collection and synthesis of all the available research on the topic and the extraction of information on the multimodal features, the fusion methods, the classification approaches, the evaluation datasets, and metrics. The results of this analysis contribute to the assessment of the state of the art and the evaluation of evidence on important research questions in multimodal deceptive deception. Moreover, they provide guidance on future research in the field.

Oh, the Places They’ll Go: A Geographic Analysis of Gubernatorial Campaigns

Geography has long played a significant role in American electoral politics. Candidates engage in “retail politics” by visiting fairs, festivals, schools, churches, and businesses, to meet and greet potential voters. However, systematically understanding where candidates are actually going has plagued prior work due to small sample sizes and lack of data availability. Presidential elections have been used with success in previous scholarship, but there are few viable candidates to compare within a single cycle. Utilizing competitive gubernatorial elections, this work attempts to address these deficiencies by utilizing social media posts to track multiple candidates in real-time across the 2018 campaign cycle at the state level. The paper tests competing theories of candidate engagement regarding travel decisions: do candidates (1) focus their attention on their partisan base or (2) try to attract independent or “swing” voters? Following an original and intensive data collection effort, we identified location-specific information for over 4700 campaign stops made by major-party candidates across seventeen states. Our results lend support to candidates spending time with their respective bases of partisan support, with Republicans going to rural areas with non-college educated individuals while Democrats travel to urban counties with a more diverse electorate.

Party system transformation from below: protests by Jobbik and LMP

AbstractRecent changes in European politics—such as the rise of so-called movement parties on both the left and the right—call for a rethinking of the links between protest dynamics and party system transformation. In this paper, we contribute to the theoretical and empirical understanding of the mechanisms that unfold in periods of intensified interactions between protest and electoral politics through a case study of the transformation of the Hungarian party system. We ask what mechanisms drive parties' involvement in protests before and after entering parliament. We focus on two competitors: the radical right Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) and the green party Politics Can Be Different (LMP). Using a dataset of protest events compiled from Hungarian news agency reports and official police records, we map the protest network mobilized by the two parties between 2002 and 2022. We analytically distinguish and empirically identify three different mobilization mechanisms: strengthening the party's profile by protesting its own issue, using protest mobilization to build alliances with other parties and actors, or relying on protest to establish a presence at the local level. The empirical results show that Jobbik relies on protest through a combination of different mechanisms, while LMP uses protest to broaden its issue profile and build alliances with other political parties. Over time, both parties increasingly rely on protest to establish a local presence outside of Budapest.

Inflation in 2022 did not affect congressional voting, but abortion did

This study examines voting in the 2022 United States congressional elections, contests that were widely expected to produce a sizable defeat for Democratic candidates for largely economic reasons. Based on a representative national probability sample of voters interviewed in both 2020 and 2022, individuals who changed their vote from one party's congressional candidate to another party's candidate did not do so in response to the salience of inflation or declining economic conditions. Instead, we find strong evidence that views on abortion were central to shifting votes in the midterm elections. Americans who favored (opposed) legal abortions were more likely to shift from voting for Republican (Democratic) candidates in 2020 to Democratic (Republican) candidates in 2022. Since a larger number of Americans supported than opposed legal abortions, the combination of these shifts ultimately improved the electoral prospects of Democratic candidates. New voters were especially likely to weigh abortion views heavily in their vote-shifting calculus. Likewise, those respondents whose confidence in the US Supreme Court declined from 2020 to 2022 were more likely to shift from voting for Republican to Democratic congressional candidates. We provide direct empirical evidence that changes in support for the Supreme Court, a nonpartisan branch of the federal government, are implicated in partisan voting behavior in another branch of government. We explore the implications of these findings for prevalent assumptions about how economic conditions influence voting, as well as for the relationship between the judiciary and electoral politics.

SIMULATION INTELLECTUAL SIGN #Aniespresiden2024 IN SOCIAL MEDIA BIGDATA ANALYSIS

Talking about 2024 is of course talking about the political year in Indonesia. 2024 is the year when legislative candidates and of course presidential and vice presidential candidates will begin to fight. Currently, one of the presidential candidates from the party that is the current government party is Anies Baswedan. Based on what has been regulated in political ethics and election ethics, it is certainly not allowed to campaign by presidential candidates before the campaign period is carried out, but what happened was the emergence of social media content from Anies Baswedan containing campaigns with disguised signs and also camouflaged content so that what the public eye sees presented in cyberspace is only the content of his daily activities. This study aims to determine how Anies Baswedan’s political branding simulation in preparation for the 2024 Presidential Election. This research uses simulation analysis on Jean Baudrillarde’s theory based on big data analysis on Tiktok social media through content related to Anies’ candidacy as a 2024 Presidential candidate. The focus of the research is the arrangement and meaning of #aniesPresiden2024 signs and messages on mainstream social media received by the digital community and then forming a simulation of Anies Baswedan’s political branding which is the result of the digital communication process towards Anies’ political representation as a 2024 presidential candidate. The results of this study found that tiktok social media has a huge influence on the political branding of anies baswedan, digital society widely receives and consumes information related to the intellectual sign of anies baswedan.

Identity and the New Rhetorics of Contention: The Vanniyar Mobilisation in Tamil Nadu in the 1980s

The Vanniyar caste became an important political player in Tamil Nadu in the 1980s, a decade widely acknowledged as a crucial and interesting decade in Indian politics in general and Tamil politics in particular. The Vanniyar caste mobilisation that re-emerged in this period indicates the changes in articulation that are important to our understanding of caste politics and social movements. This article highlights the process by which Vanniyar mobilisation initially emerged to represent caste concerns and later negotiated electoral politics. This process involved going beyond caste concerns and the inclusion of issues related to language, ethnicity, concerns of backward classes, and Tamil ‘common masses.’ The article maps the dynamics in the trajectory of Vanniyar mobilisation in the 1980s by bringing to light the shifts in concerns and identity claims. It thereby points to the nature of caste mobilisation in contemporary times, particularly within the larger context of an anti-caste initiative in the form of the Dravidian movement/politics.