Runoff Elections Research Articles

Measuring the Competitiveness of Elections

The concept of electoral competition plays a central role in many subfields of political science, but no consensus exists on how to measure it. One key challenge is how to conceptualize and measure electoral competitiveness at the district level across alternative electoral systems. Recent efforts to meet this challenge have introduced general measures of competitiveness which rest on explicit calculations about how votes translate into seats, but also implicit assumptions about how effort maps into votes (and how costly effort is). We investigate how assumptions about the effort-to-votes mapping affect the units in which competitiveness is best measured, arguing in favor of vote-share-denominated measures and against vote-share-per-seat measures. Whether elections under multimember proportional representation systems are judged more or less competitive than single-member plurality or runoff elections depends directly on the units in which competitiveness is assessed (and hence on assumptions about how effort maps into votes).

The Principles Established by the Recommendation CM/Rec(2017)5 on Standards for E-voting Applied to Other Channels of Remote Voting

E-voting is highly suspicious to many citizens and institutions. Past pilot implementations ended before Supreme Courts and mostly not in favour of e-voting. Beside these political and legal battles regarding e-voting, postal voting seems to be commonly accepted and not in question. Motivated by a landmark ruling of the Austrian Constitutional Court in 2016, which led to the revocation of the run-off elections result due to irregularities with postal voting, this paper analyses whether current postal voting regulations and standards in Germany comply to the principles established by the latest Council of Europe (CoE) recommendation on standards for e-voting. Both voting channels are channels for remote voting, hence principles established for one channel must, in the view of the author, also be fully applicable for the other channel. This paper applies the standards set by the recommendation to e-voting to the more commonly used remote voting channel postal voting and concludes that most of these standards cannot be met.

Elections in times of neo-coupism and populism: A short essay on Brazil's right-wing presidential candidates' plans for governance and their proposals for gender and Afro-Brazilians

In October 2018, Brazil held general elections in which new senators, federal representatives, state representatives, governors, and the new president of the republic were chosen. The singularity of the context surrounding the elections is evident: the call occurred two years after a presidential impeachment linked to a state coup which consolidated the ascent of populist forces from the right and which initiated a series of regressions in social rights, criminalization of progressive activism, and increase of police violence. As a result, in the presidential elections, populist candidates and discourses of hate became popular, targeting historically marginalized social groups within the country (women, African-Brazilians, LGBTQIs – Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, Queers, Intersex – working class, rural communities, and the indigenous populations). This essay examines the presidential proposals or positions towards the aforementioned groups, paying particular attention to speeches of right-populist candidates, especially those made by Jair Bolsonaro, chosen in a runoff election.

La Doble Vuelta en las Elecciones Presidenciales en Colombia 1994-2018: La búsqueda esquiva de mayor legitimidad y de consensos

The article analyzed the reform that established the two-round system for Colombian presidential elections. The objective was to contrast the theory forecasts and their concretions in a case study: the institutional changes and their influence on the presidential races during the 1994-2018 period. The central argument is that institutional reform has contributed to an increase in the number of candidates, to greater pluralism and the projection of new parties. It also has encouraged the formation of electoral alliances and coalitions of governments and produced greater legitimacy for presidents. The main finding is that in this case, some of the theoretical forecasts were met, but others were not.

Ukraine's Post-Maidan Struggles: I. The Rise of an "Outsider" President

In May 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was inaugurated as Ukraine's sixth president. A political novice best known as a comic actor, he had garnered over 73 percent of the vote in the April run-off election. While Zelensky's inaugural address left little doubt that he would continue to position himself as a political outsider and disruptor of the system, it remains to be seen whether his actions will be as bold as his words. As the country heads into parliamentary elections, the coming months will be a crucial test of Ukraine's democracy, the resiliency of its still fragile institutions, and its dedication to continuing reforms.

Bolsonaro and Brazil's Illiberal Backlash

On 28 October 2018, far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro captured Brazil's presidency following a highly polarized runoff election against Workers' Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad. Multiple crises that have afflicted Brazil since 2013 and the blame Brazilians cast on establishment parties for these travails gave Bolsonaro his opening. Yet while prolonged economic recession, unprecedented corruption, and escalating crime rendered the PT and other major parties vulnerable, Bolsonaro leveraged his fringe status adroitly, sounding a law and order and anticorruption message that resonated strongly with the public. The incoming president's authoritarian leanings and illiberal rhetoric present concerns for Brazil's democracy.

The Effects of a ‘None of the Above’ Ballot Paper Option on Voting Behavior and Election Outcomes

We investigate how an explicit blank vote option “None of the above” (NOTA) on the ballot paper affects voting behavior and election results in political elections where non-establishment candidates are on the ballot. We report evidence from two online field experiments conducted in the weeks preceding the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and the 2016 Austrian run-off election for President. The two elections are special because in the U.S. election one firmly establishment candidate (Hillary Clinton) was facing a self-declared non-establishment candidate (Donald Trump), while in the Austrian election, both candidates were from outside the traditional political establishment. In our experiments we subjected participants either to the original ballot paper or to a manipulated ballot paper where we added a NOTA option. We find that participants with a protest motive, who are either unhappy with the candidate set or with the political establishment in general, choose NOTA. Introducing a NOTA option on the ballot increases participation and reduces the vote shares of non-establishment candidates.

The myth of Afghan electoral democracy: the irregularities of the 2014 presidential election

ABSTRACTThis article systematically assesses the 2014 Afghanistan Presidential Election, the first transfer of power from President Hamid Karzai to an elected successor, using provincial voting data as well as explicit data from polling centers. The analysis finds unusual voting results in the April election, where no candidate received 50%+1 votes required by the Afghan constitution, versus the voting results realized for the June ‘runoff election.’ As in other Afghan voting analyses, this article finds voting based on ethno-linguistic preferences, and interestingly found Dr. Ashraf Ghani receiving almost all the swing votes in the runoff election even though the other leading candidate from the April election all endorsed Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. More importantly, however, the research presented here clearly finds extremely strange voting patterns. For example, the polling data center analysis finds 606 polling places where Ghani received all 600 votes and Abdullah received none and another 900 polling centers that gave virtually all its votes to Ghani. These results in combination with other analyses raise the very real possibility that the election results were illegitimate. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the research to future Afghan elections and their processes as well as to the long-standing conflict in the country.

Casting an invalid vote at the 2017 French presidential election

France voted for a new president on May 7, 2017. Emmanuel Macron, the candidate for the social liberal party En Marche!, won in a runoff election against Marine Le Pen, the candidate for the right-wing populist and nationalist party Front National. An enormous increase can be recorded comparing the shares of blank and spoiled ballot papers in the first round on 23 April, when no candidate won a majority, with that of the runoff election, which was held between the top two candidates less than a month later. Exceeding 11% in the 2017 runoff election all in all, invalid voting is more common than it has ever been before. In light of this, there is a strong suspicion that numerous voters—in particular those who did not vote for one of the top two candidates in the first round—decided to vote blank or spoiled their ballot paper in the second round. However, this conventional wisdom has not yet been tested empirically.

Does More Choice Lead to Reduced Racially Polarized Voting? Assessing the Impact of Ranked-Choice Voting in Mayoral Elections

Author(s): McDaniel, Jason | Abstract: Politics in American cities is largely driven by racial group cleavages, and voting in urban elections is polarized along racial lines. Several cities have implemented a relatively new reform to urban elections called ranked-choice voting (RCV), which eliminates the plurality run-off election by giving voters the option to rank-order several vote preferences. This article examines whether the expanded preference choices associated with ranked-choice voting reduce the level of racially polarized voting in mayoral elections. In the first stage of analysis, precinct-level election results from Oakland, CA, and San Francisco, CA, are used to explore variation in racially polarized voting before and after the implementation of RCV. The second stage of analysis uses a difference-in-differences design to analyze racially polarized voting in RCV cities compared to non-RCV cities. The results indicate that racially polarized voting did not decrease due to the implementation of RCV. Rather, the results show that RCV contributed to higher levels of racially polarized voting between white and Asian voters.

Measuring presidential centrism and its effect on repression: does ideology influence whether democratic governments respect human rights?

ABSTRACTIf presidential runoff elections promote high human rights respect (Holzer 2018), and presidential runoff elections also promote the election of centrists (Haan and Vokerink 2001; Brusco, Dziubiski, and Roy 2012), are centrist presidents more likely to protect human rights? This research note aim to answer this question by analysing an original measure of presidential centrism for 14 democracies spanning from 1990 to 2011. By finding that there is a greater probability of an increase in government respect for human rights (and lower probability of a decrease in government respect for human rights) when the president is ideologically closer to the median voter, I reemphasise the ‘impact of ideology on human rights practices’ (Yazici 2018: 12).

Many-Candidate Nash Equilibria for Elections Involving Random Selection

We consider various voter game theory models which involve some form of random selection, including random tie-breaking, and single elimination, and runoff of the top two candidates. Under certain rules for resolving ties, we prove that with any number of candidates, each such model has a Nash equilibrium in which all candidates attempt to contest the election at the median policy. For models which do not permit ties, we prove that each such model has a Nash equilibrium in which the number of candidates contesting the election is essentially equal to the ratio of the positive payoff for winning divided by the negative of the payoff for losing. All of these model variations thus predict lots of candidates. This result contrasts with Duverger’s Law, which asserts that only two (major) candidates will contest the election at all, and which has been confirmed in some other voter game theory models. However, it is consistent with recent primary and leadership and runoff elections where the number of major candidates reached two figures. We close with a simulation study showing that, through repeated elections and averaging and tweaking, candidates’ actions will sometimes converge to their predicted equilibrium behaviour.

Democratic presidential elections and human rights: does a runoff round reduce repression?

ABSTRACTWhile theory suggests that democratic presidential elections should have a positive effect on human rights practices, the literature’s findings have thus far been mixed. Can differentiating between different types of presidential elections help to explain the literature’s contrasting results? This study estimates an ordered probit model to analyse a data set of 227 elections that occur in 54 presidential democracies from 1982 to 2011. Unlike presidential elections by plurality rule, runoff elections require a majority. I argue that in order to obtain a majority, presidential runoff elections favour candidates willing to form diverse cabinets with players more likely to be willing to veto repressive policies. Consistent with this argument, I find that in comparison to single-round presidential elections, after two-round presidential elections states are more likely to experience an increase in government respect for human rights and less likely to experience a decrease in government respect for human rights.

Patience, dynamic of protest, and democratic consolidation

Protests on the street may last weeks or even months. Why do some people join protests against government wrongdoing on day one while others wait weeks to do so? This article suggests that delay discounting—an important personal trait that decides how much people discount the future pay-off—determines when an individual joins a protest. An analysis of the 2007 Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey reveals that Ukrainians who discounted the future less were much more likely to join the Orange Revolution right after the electoral irregularities of the 2004 run-off election. Weeks passed as they waited in the snow for the Supreme Court required rerun. In contrast, impatient citizens joined the protest several days after the scandal broke. Additional evidence based on a cross-country survey shows that lower levels of delay discounting help explain the consolidation of democracy over time. This evidence linking delay discounting and political participation supports the concept of self-enforcing democracy and helps us understand the conditions under which a democracy may be in peril.

The alternative vote: Do changes in single-member voting systems affect descriptive representation of women and minorities?

There exist two, conflicting, conventional wisdoms in the United States about which electoral systems best provide for descriptive representation. On the one hand, single-member districts are understood to be the best way to ensure representation for ethnic and racial minority groups, at least when populations are geographically concentrated. On the other hand, it is well-established that a greater proportion of women are elected in multi-member districts in the United States, especially in state legislatures. At the intersection, minority women are not well served by single-member districts, at least using plurality or majority runoff election, but it is far from clear that multi-member districts are much better. This paper takes a fine-grained approach to electoral systems reform and descriptive representation, exploring the impacts of the reform of the electoral formula in single-member systems in the context of the adoption of the alternative vote (AV) in several California Bay Area cities. Using similar cities in the area that did not adopt AV as controls and a difference-in-differences research design, we show that reform of single-member electoral formulae can have a significant positive effect on descriptive representation.

A model of pre-electoral coalition formation

In many countries, three or more candidates compete against one another in single-office elections. I present a model of three candidates competing for a single office in which two candidates can form a coalition prior to the election (a pre-electoral coalition). Since the candidates are both policy- and office-motivated, one candidate can incentivize the other candidate to withdraw his candidacy by choosing a joint policy platform. I examine how electoral environments such as election rules, ideological distance, and pre-election polls influence incentives to form pre-electoral coalitions. I find that pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form (i) in plurality elections than in two-round runoff elections, (ii) as the threshold for first-round victory decreases in two-round runoff elections, (iii) as the two potential coalition partners' ideological distance increases, conditional on divided support, and (iv) as the fraction of office value which is transferable increases. Moreover, I analyze and compare voter welfare under plurality and the two-round runoff rules.

Electoral Rules, Political Competition and Fiscal Expenditures: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Brazilian Municipalities

We exploit a discontinuity in the rules of Brazilian mayoral elections to investigate whether political competition has a causal impact on fiscal policy choices. In municipalities with fewer than 200,000 voters, mayors are elected under a plurality voting system. In all other municipalities, a runoff election takes place between the top two candidates if neither achieves the majority of votes. Our results suggest that political competition induces more investment and less current expenditures, particularly personnel expenditures. The impact is larger when incumbents can run for re-election, suggesting incentives matter insofar as incumbents can themselves remain in office.

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Measuring the Competitiveness of Elections

The concept of electoral competition plays a central role in many subfields of political science, but no consensus exists on how to measure it. One key challenge is how to conceptualize and measure electoral competitiveness at the district level across alternative electoral systems. Recent efforts to meet this challenge have introduced general measures of competitiveness which rest on explicit calculations about how votes translate into seats, but also implicit assumptions about how effort maps into votes (and how costly effort is). We investigate how assumptions about the effort-to-votes mapping affect the units in which competitiveness is best measured, arguing in favor of vote-share denominated measures and against vote-share-per-seat measures. Whether elections under multimember proportional representation systems are judged more or less competitive than single-member plurality or runoff elections depends directly on the units in which competitiveness is assessed (and hence on assumptions about how effort maps into votes).

Measuring the Competitiveness of Elections

The concept of electoral competition plays a central role in many subfields of political science, but no consensus exists on how to measure it. One key challenge is how to conceptualize and measure electoral competitiveness at the district level across alternative electoral systems. Recent efforts to meet this challenge have introduced general measures of competitiveness which rest on explicit calculations about how votes translate into seats, but also implicit assumptions about how effort maps into votes (and how costly effort is). We investigate how assumptions about the effort-to-votes mapping affect the units in which competitiveness is best measured, arguing in favor of vote-share denominated measures and against vote-share-per-seat measures. Whether elections under multimember proportional representation systems are judged more or less competitive than single-member plurality or runoff elections depends directly on the units in which competitiveness is assessed (and hence on assumptions about how effort maps into votes).