Snap Election Research Articles

Inside the ‘secret garden’: Candidate selection at the 2019 UK general election

Candidate selections are seen as the ‘secret garden’ of UK politics. Hundreds of parliamentary constituencies rarely change hands, meaning that the ‘real election’ is the incumbent party’s selection process. Yet scholarship into candidate selection in the United Kingdom remains limited. In this article, we build a novel dataset of known shortlisted candidates in winnable seats to offer the first cross-party analysis of who gets shortlisted, and what factors influence success among shortlisted candidates. We find that shortlisted female and ethnic minority candidates are still less likely to be selected as parliamentary candidates, while living locally is by far the most significant factor affecting selection success. However, the nature of the 2019 snap election allowed parties to use emergency powers to advantage party insiders in late selections. We further find that, contrary to media focus, party faction was not a significant factor in Conservative or Labour Party selections.

Facebook Campaigning in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian Federal Elections

Canada’s federal elections in 2019 and 2021 produced a similar outcome—a minority Liberal government. These back-to-back elections provide an ideal context to understand trends in digital campaigning strategies and assess how the pandemic influenced campaigns’ use of social media. We examine how the three leaders of the major parties used Facebook in 2019 (<em>n</em> = 712) compared to 2021 (<em>n</em> = 979). The Conservative leader O’Toole posted more frequently than other candidates in 2021, fitting with the equalization theory of digital campaigning. In 2019 and 2021, the incumbent prime minister, Trudeau, received the most user engagement on his Facebook posts despite calling a snap election during a pandemic and less than two years into his mandate. These findings support normalization theories of digital campaigning with evidence of an accumulating incumbent advantage. The Covid-19 pandemic sidelined attention to climate change. We argue that the Liberal government owned both issues; we expected Trudeau to have greater attention to and user engagement for these policy posts. In general, Facebook posts about the pandemic yielded greater user engagement than posts that did not mention the pandemic. Candidates tested new campaign strategies in 2021, particularly making calls to interact with them; these posts yielded higher user engagement than posts that did not include a call to interact. While candidates used new social media campaign strategies, voter turnout declined from 2019 to 2021. These findings have implications for other democratic systems and the future of digital campaigning.

Do incumbents gain from calling a snap election?

ABSTRACT In many countries the incumbent party is free to call an early election. This gives them an advantage over opposition parties. But this decision can also backfire. In the present paper, we examine voters’ reactions to a snap election held despite a fixed election date, resistance by opposition parties, and a global pandemic. We conduct a survey experiment during the 2021 Canadian federal election campaign to assess whether voters are influenced by information about the fixed election law and the argument that the election call was opportunistic and unnecessary. While some respondents, particularly partisans of the Liberal Party, the incumbent party, moderately respond in a negative way to new information, our treatments overall do little to influence views about the snap election. However, negative attitudes toward the election call are a decisive consideration for many voters, inflicting an electoral cost to the Liberal Party which likely deprived it from a legislative majority.

Right-wing victory in the 2022 Italian parliamentary election: territorial patterns and systemic implications

The snap election held in September 2022 saw the victory of the right-wing coalition, with a remarkable performance of the populist radical right party Fratelli d’Italia and its leader, Giorgia Meloni, who has become the first female Prime Minister of the country. Another unprecedented element concerns participation, which was the lowest in post-war Italy for a national election. Throughout this article, we first shed light on the background of this election, by highlighting how the specificities of the electoral system and previous developments during the last legislature affected the strategic coordination of political parties. We then proceed to the illustration of the results, with a territorial analysis of participation figures, vote share and competitiveness of electoral constituencies. Finally, we assess the implications of this election for the institutionalization of the party system. What emerges is a picture of growing abstention, disproportionality, fragmentation and electoral volatility, which suggests an overall consolidation of instability.

A Workflow to Detect, Monitor, and Update Lists of Coordinated Social Media Accounts Across Time: The Case of the 2022 Italian Election

Information operations that target public opinion often exploit breaking news, crises, and elections by using coordinated social media actors to disseminate problematic content. These events often reveal the relationships between actors, prompting the creation of lists of malicious actors and news sources. However, relying on outdated lists may underestimate the prevalence and impact of such operations. This article presents a novel workflow to detect, monitor, and update lists of coordinated social media actors during and beyond peak activity periods. Using this approach, known problematic actors are constantly monitored, allowing the detection of new actors and the update of the monitored pool. The workflow was applied to the 2022 Italian snap election, leveraging previous research on coordinated inauthentic behavior during the 2018 and 2019 Italian elections. The initial list of 435 coordinated accounts was monitored, surfacing 1,022 overly shared or commented political posts, 272 coordinated links, and detecting 66 political and 554 generic coordinated accounts not previously listed. Three case studies were identified: one politically motivated, one click-economy driven, and one religiously motivated operation. The article discusses the implications of this approach, its limitations, and potential future work.

The Use of TikTok for Political Campaigning in Canada: The Case of Jagmeet Singh

TikTok is a critical platform for political campaigns seeking to engage with new publics through digital advocacy. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, has emerged as a TikTok celebrity since establishing his profile in 2019. At the time of writing, he is the only Canadian federal party leader using TikTok with his interactions greatly surpassing those on his other social media profiles. Strategically utilizing TikTok to promote his social justice-oriented political platform and to build momentum in preparation for a snap election, his digital campaign has received extensive attention from the Canadian press. Through qualitative content analysis of his videos and news media coverage of Singh’s activity on TikTok, this article questions how his TikTok profile thematically engages with social democratic politics within the context of the permanent campaign. Attention is directed toward how Singh employs TikTok’s features to establish his brand of left-wing populism and advocate against systematic social inequality to appeal to TikTok’s youthful demographic.

Head: A Perfect Storm: Covid-19, Snap Elections, and Archaic Legal Framework

The Covid-19 pandemic has tremendous implications for democracy worldwide. Emergency measures undertaken to combat the pandemic tend to demonstrate a trade-off between public health and fundamental democratic principles. The Caribbean is not immune from this. This paper examines how Covid-19, and the calling of a snap election in Barbados scheduled for January 19, 2022, when combined with archaic election rules, led to serious implications for the conduct of the election, specifically regarding the ability of citizens to vote. The paper is divided into five sections, beginning with an introductory section. The second section examines the implications of Covid-19 for democratic participation. The third section explores the legal framework for the conduct of elections in Barbados and the limitations of that legal framework. The penultimate section discusses the implications of the snap election for electoral participation and electoral integrity. The paper ends on the need for electoral reform in the country.

Risk, institutions, and policy in decisions to join a start-up party: evidence from the 2017 snap election in Japan

AbstractResearch has shown that Japan's parallel electoral system altered the incentives that parties and their members face when competing for lower-house seats, leading to, among other things, more policy-oriented and less personalistic elections. What is less well known is how these altered incentives affect the decisions of incumbents to stay with their current party organizations or exit and join another political party. We address this question by using data from the 2017 snap election in Japan, specifically, the exit decisions of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) incumbents. Typically exit decisions involve considerations of electoral support, policy, or increased office benefits. Our results indicate that policy considerations were a primary factor in DPJ members' exit decisions but also that exiting legislators considered the risks associated with these decisions, which was molded by available party alternatives, each's electoral strength, and a unique feature of Japan's electoral rules, the fact that it reduced the electoral risk for some but not all incumbents who contemplated switching parties.

Collective angst and group continuity as predictors of collective action for progressive city policies

Paweł Adamowicz, the liberal mayor of Gdańsk, Poland, died on January 14, 2019, after being stabbed by a man who rushed onstage during a charity event. Four studies were carried out to analyze the predictors of willingness to engage in collective action in support of the progressive city policies he initiated. In Study 1 ( N = 214), collective angst was related to collective action intention. Identification with Gdańsk mediated this relation. In the next two studies, we tested the role of the perceived continuity of the in-group. The relationship between collective angst and willingness to support collective actions was mediated by perceived essentialist continuity of the group (Study 2, on snap election day, N = 121). Moreover, results confirmed that collective angst predicted strength of identification with Gdańsk. This identification was related to the perceived essentialist continuity of the group, which in turn was linked to willingness to engage in collective actions in support of progressive policies (Study 3, N = 98). In Study 4 ( N = 456), conducted within a few days before the presidential election in Poland, we replicated the model of mediation obtained in Study 3, and showed that contextualized collective angst also predicted collective action intentions.

What Are the Consequences of Snap Elections on Citizens’ Voting Behavior?

ABSTRACT In some democracies, the ruling party can strategically call a ‘snap’ (or ‘early’) election before the end of its mandate in order to maximise its chances of re-election. Little is known on the consequences of calling such an election. In this article, we contribute to this literature by analysing whether snap elections affect citizens’ voting behaviour. Does being angry at the decision of the incumbent government have an impact on citizens’ decision to vote or not to vote and/or their vote choice calculus? To answer these questions, we make use of two different and independently conducted surveys in Canada during a snap election. We do not find evidence that calling an early election reduces citizens’ likelihood to vote. However, when they do decide to vote, citizens that resent the decision to call an early election are substantially more likely to punish the incumbent government.

The end of the EU affair: the UK general election of 2019

The UK election of 12th December 2019 – the third election in five years and the second snap election in a row – returned a Conservative majority government led by Boris Johnson and the lowest number of Labour MPs since 1935. Three-and-a-half years after the 2016 referendum, the government finally had sufficient parliamentary support for Brexit, and at the end of January 2020 the UK left the European Union. The result of the election can largely be explained by the continuing importance of Brexit. The previous election, held in 2017, had seen an increase in party sorting along Brexit lines – Leavers had shifted towards the Conservatives, whilst Remainers shifted towards Labour. The 2019 election saw a continuation of that process on the Leave side, as the Conservatives continued to win over Leavers, but a slight reversal on the Remain side, with some Remainers abandoning Labour for more avowedly pro-EU parties such as the Liberal Democrats.

Sontaku and political scandals in Japan

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explain a new scandal ingredient in Japanese politics called sontaku. This word refers to cases when officials grant special treatment to a project because they believe they are acting in accordance with the wishes of an associated powerful person.Design/methodology/approachThis paper describes the specific construction of major scandals involving sontaku from 2017 based primarily on newspaper accounts, examines the consequences of these scandals for politicians and bureaucrats, and discusses their implications for combating corruption in Japan.FindingsThe scandals after 2017 damaged to some extent the public support for the current Japanese administration and influenced the prime minister's decision to call a snap election. The scandals also highlighted systematic problems in the bureaucracy and motivated the government to reform laws concerning the management of public documents.Originality/valueThis paper will be useful to scholars and policy makers interested in studying the causes and consequences of scandals and political corruption in Japan.

A tale of firsts: the 2019 Austrian snap election

The 2019 Austrian snap election, held on 29 September 2019, was preceded by a series of scandals. Most prominent among them was the so-called ‘Ibizagate’ involving the former Vice-Chancellor and FPÖ party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache. The scandal eventually led to the collapse of the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition in May 2019 and the formation of a caretaker government. The election day in September brought a clear victory for the ÖVP with an increase of almost six percentage points, compared to its vote share in the 2017 election. The second big winner was the Green party which scored the best result in the party history with 13.9 per cent of the vote. Amid scandals, the FPÖ saw its support fall to only 16.2 per cent; the election also resulted in an all-time low for the SPÖ achieving only 21.2 per cent. The article presents the background, the election campaign and the results of the 2019 Austrian election, discussing the wide range of ‘firsts’ that characterized them, including the formation of the first ÖVP-Green coalition government in Austria.

SOCIAL POLICY IN THE DISCOURSE OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE SNAP ELECTION TO THE VERKHOVNA RADA IN 2014

The article describes the political parties' approach to implementing the state's social policy during the snap election to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in 2014. A discursive dimension of political parties' activities in the area of social policy was studied. Specific examples have shown political parties as a subject of social policy formation. It was found out that the events of the Revolution of Dignity and the beginning of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine forced Ukrainian politicians to reconsider existing approaches to the formation of party programs. The author analyzed the reflection of social policy in the election programs of the parties that had formed parliamentary groups: «Blok Petra Poroshenka «Solidarnist», «Narodnyi front», Radykalnoi partii Oleha Liashka, «Opozytsiinyi blok», «Obiednannia «Samopomich», «Vseukrainskoho obiednannia «Batkivshchyna». Domestic political events were reflected in the party's discourse on social policy, shifting the priorities in the election programs of political forces in the direction of security policy, improving defense capabilities, and fighting corruption. The main tendencies related to the change of political parties' approaches to forming state social policy are revealed. Dominating the liberal approach to social policy issues in parliamentary parties' programs was aimed at reducing the state's role. At the same time, the speeches of political forces on social policy were mostly full of populist slogans and, in most cases, did not contain any specifics, including ways to solve social problems in society. Trying to get as much electoral support as possible, politicians did not bother to develop real program steps in the social sphere. Instead, the social sphere problems, which had a systemic character, were not solved based on a clear "road map" of actions. The discourse of the political parties participating in the election race, which eventually formed the parliament, did not present a comprehensive program for forming and implementing social policy in the new political environment. Keywords: political parties, social policy, social state, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, political discourse.

Terror attacks, issue salience, and party competence: Diagnosing shifting vote preferences in a panel study

How does a dramatic shift in political context that renders security concerns the most salient electoral issue influence voting? To address this question, we take advantage of the peculiar timing of elections and heightened terror attacks in Turkey with the use of original panel data. The June 2015 Turkish general election resulted in a hung parliament, and a snap election was held in November. While the period before June was relatively calm, the inter-election period witnessed an upsurge of terror attacks and casualties. A three-wave panel enables us to track how voters’ electoral preferences changed over this period. Our analyses suggest that the terror attacks led voters to prioritize parties’ perceived competence in addressing security concerns at the ballot box. The abrupt change in issue salience has bolstered support for the incumbent Justice and Development Party which was evaluated by voters as more competent than other parties.

The Contemporary History of Duterte's Mass Murder

118 A & Q The Contemporary History of Duterte’s Mass Murder Lisandro E. Claudio How does one write contemporary history amid mass murder? This A&Q asks us to reflect on the historian’s responsibility to current events, so I would like to take the opportunity to discuss the crimes against humanity happening in my country. A historian of Philippine politics must confront the gruesome reality of more than four thousand poor Filipinos (the most conservative estimate ) butchered in President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs (Talabong 2018). That same historian must also grapple with the fact that few object to these murders and that their perpetrator remains wildly popular (Talabong 2018). The images are familiar by now: dead bodies on the street, with cardboard signs declaring “I’m a pusher; don’t imitate me”; morgues with bodies stacked like firewood; families who wail outside police cordons, as onlookers take selfies with the lifeless fathers, husbands, or brothers of the bereaved. It is the poor who are murdered. And in class-­stratified Philippines, it is easy for someone of my class background to ignore them. I work in a university in downtown Manila, where killings are common, and a short walk from my office takes me to an urban poor slum subjected to periodic police brutality. But that is not a walk I have to take. I can wall myself off in my gated university, my gated subdivision, and my air-­conditioned car. And since I have not had the stomach to join journalists reporting on the killings, I have not seen dead bodies. Yet while I have avoided these bodies, I struggle to avoid their ghosts. It is historiography that forces me to confront the bloodshed. I could try burrowing my head in the not-­so-­distant past, since, like many Filipino historians, I have a fascination with the nineteenth century—­the period of Jose Rizal and the Philippine Revolution. But the topics I write about—­ the state and the ideas that shape it—­draw me to the blood-­soaked present . I once wrote about the history of Filipino socialism (Claudio 2013), and now, amid what some consider a reactionary turn, I write about the history of Philippine liberalism (Claudio 2017). And the question I ask myself is, Whither these political traditions in the age of Duterte’s populism ? I have no idea. But even if I did, I would not trust myself, because my powers of prediction are shot. Historians of contemporary history are perennially tempted to predict , believing as they do that historical training accords them a unique A & Q 119 insight into the patterns of sociopolitical change. I once shared in this conceit—­ a conceit I can no longer maintain today. In my hubris, I once believed in the stability of Philippine liberal democracy . I did not acknowledge it before, but I may have, in retrospect, fallen into the liberal trap of foreseeing an end of history. I certainly did not believe that my country had solved its major problems, and I accepted the clichés about its political economy: oligarchic, corrupt, unequal. But I also thought that the Philippines, with its vibrant activist community and long democratic heritage, was strengthening its political institutions. I marveled at our breakneck economic growth under the presidency of Benigno Aquino III (2010–­ 16). To friends who found my optimism ill-­ founded, I replied with a facetious, comparative area studies–­ inspired quip: “At least we’re in better shape than Malaysia with its racist ruling coalition, or Thailand with its junta.” My country’s history “ended” in February 1986, after the overthrow of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the installation of Corazon Aquino as president. The bloodless EDSA (Epifanio delos Santos Avenue, where the revolution occurred) “People Power” Revolution not only ended a dictatorship but also blunted the appeal of the Maoist Left. For much of Marcos’s thirty-­ year rule, it was the Maoist Communist Party Philippines (CPP) that led opposition to authoritarianism, with the bourgeois opposition asserting itself only in the 1980s. But when Aquino ran against Marcos in the snap election of 1985, the Maoists and their legal fronts boycotted the election. Most of them were likewise absent from protests against Marcos’s...

OFF-YEAR PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS OF 1908: DETAILS OF MYKOLA HANKEVICH BIOGRAPHY AND THE HISTORY OF THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT IN LVIV

The article describes the character of Mykola Hankevich in the context of the early parliamentary elections of 1908 in Galicia. The author sets out his task, by shifting the usual historiographical accents, to consider the general election culture in the provincial capital in the early twentieth century, the theory and practice of the international socialist movement in a multinational urban environment. The well-established point of view of K. Jobst and other researchers, who believe that the conflict over Hankevich's face in the 1907 elections, when the executive leadership of the PPSD did not support his candidacy, is the beginning of the path that ultimately led the Polish and Ukrainian Social Democrats parties in the bosom of "their" national camps, and the ephemeral international socialist movement in Galicia disintegrated. The author believes that such a narrative simplifies the processes that took place in the environment of the Galician socialist parties. Cooperation between Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish socialists did not stop until the outbreak of the First World War. In the USDP, M. Hankevich himself did not cease to cooperate closely with Polish and Jewish socialists. During the snap election of 1908, the PPSD leader agreed with the candidacy of Mykola Hankevich, who, however, lost this election by winning 734 votes against 1011. However, in the anti-Ukrainian hysteria that had not yet subsided after the assassination of Andrzej Potocki, more than 40% of the vote, loyal to the Ukrainian and socialist candidates in the bourgeois Lviv district, looked like a tremendous success for Hankevich. Having identified the main reasons for this success, namely: his impeccable personal reputation, eloquence, popularity among the Lviv workers and intellectuals, genuine internationalism and willingness to represent different ethnic groups and different social strata, the author, referring to the memories of the Polish socialist Yevhen Morachevsky, calls another circumstance that explains the results of the vote quite differently. It is about 450 votes that Morachevsky bought in favour of Gankevich. The author notes that Morachevsky considers his dubious act as a peculiar feat - to pollute his hands to achieve a noble political goal, in which, in his opinion, he manifests the instinct and ability of a politician, thereby opposing himself to "dreamers" and idealists who did not compromise own principles.

The Urge to Purge: Forecasting Erdogan’s Political Survival Following the Failed Coup

Drawing upon earlier research on the post failed coup survival of political leaders, we offer an ex ante in sample estimate of the likely political survival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan following the fail coup of 2016. Depending on the assumption made about when he entered office, we conclude that his tenure is likely to endure until 2026, a result that was reached before his recent call for a snap election and its implications. We conclude with a brief discussion of the policy implications of President Erdogan’s likely length of tenure.

The June 2017 General Election: Welsh Labour’s Success Story

General elections offer opportunities to study Britain’s political life, in particular the position and strength of each party in the four nations which make up the United Kingdom. The Labour Party has dominated the Welsh political landscape for decades now and the June 2017 snap election was no exception. Welsh Labour obtained good results, mainly thanks to the prominent role given to Carwyn Jones, First Minister and leader of the party. He adopted an ambivalent attitude: he was extremely visible on the question Brexit but he refused to limit campaign debates to this issue.

Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Brexit Referendum and Post-Referendum Events on Selected Stock Exchange Indexes

Abstract The paper studies the impact of political turbulence in the United Kingdom in 2016 and 2017 on selected relevant stock indexes. The empirical analysis consists of unit breakpoint tests. The potential points of structural break are determined based on an overview of occurrences of political instability from the Brexit referendum to the snap Parliamentary election of 2017. The paper concludes that the outcome of the referendum on Brexit caused a structural break that was visible in every stock index studied. On the other hand, the paper fails to find any evidence of a structural break caused by subsequent events, namely the decision to call the snap election or the outcome of the election itself. This implies that investors have accepted the UK decision to leave the EU and there was no further destabilization of the stock markets. It can be further concluded that the United Kingdom and the European Union need to address a deep political divide and find a way to coexist and mutually benefit in the period of negotiations and after the Brexit takes place