Preferential Voting

Táto kniha ako prvá prináša komplexné spracovanie témy preferenčného hlasovania v parlamentných voľbách na Slovensku. Tento mechanizmus sa v slovenských podmienkach uplatňuje od roku 1990, no jeho dosah na personálne zloženie parlamentu je značne obmedzený. Autor v publikácii uskutočňuje detailnú analýzu súčasného stavu a predstavuje jeho hlavné aspekty a dôsledky. Nad rámec toho rozoberá jednotlivé alternatívy k existujúcemu systému, ktoré boli predstavené v posledných rokoch.
Ako pristupujú slovenskí občania k prednostnému hlasovaniu? Aké dopady malo zavedenie celoštátneho volebného obvodu? Akú šancu na zvolenie majú kandidáti na dne listiny a prečo sa tento krok opakovane podaril Igorovi Matovičovi? Získavajú slovenskí poslanci podporu po celom území štátu? A môže sa vplyv slovenských voličov v otázke výberu členov parlamentu posilniť pomocou zmeny aktuálneho volebného zá­kona? Na tieto i ďalšie otázky nájde čitateľ v predstavenej knihe odpovede, vychádzajúce z autorovho dlhodobého zamerania na danú problema­tiku a podložené bohatým grafickým a faktografickým spracovaním.

The South Pacific’s two largest independent
island states embraced bold institutional
reform packages at the turn of the millennium.
Both Papua New Guinea and Fiji shifted
away from first-past-the-post (or plurality)
systems and adopted instead variants of the
Australian-style ‘alternative vote’ system1.
Both introduced new legislation designed to
limit parliamentarians’ ability to cross the
floor in the hope of strengthening the role of
political parties. Both countries also saw
their prime ministers, who were the key
architects of these reforms, badly defeated at
the first elections held under the new systems
they had introduced. Fiji’s reforms were
introduced as part of a new constitution in
1997, and two elections since (1999 and
2001) have provided some opportunity to
assess and analyse the impact of the new
legislation. Papua New Guinea’s electoral
reforms, introduced in 2001–2002, remain
largely untested, although legislation
governing party and government formation
came into force before the 2002 polls and the
new electoral laws apply to by-elections
thereafter, and to the forthcoming general
elections scheduled for 2007. This paper seeks
to explore lessons that the Fiji experience may
provide for Papua New Guinea.

** Final version published in Political Behavior **
"Candidates increasingly make use of social media in election campaigns. However, little is known about the effect this increased use of social media has. Candidates themselves seem to believe it makes a difference, but is this the case? This paper seeks to examine whether or not candidates that make use of social media in their personal campaign get a significantly higher number of (preference) votes. Social media can also have an indirect effect. In this case social media usage will have a positive effect when journalists who follow a candidate actually write about a candidate’s messages and the message is thereby presented to a broader audience. To carry out our analysis, we make use of a unique dataset that combines data on social media usage and data on the candidates themselves (such as position on the list, being well-known, exposure to the old media, gender, ethnicity and incumbency). Our dataset includes information on all 493 candidates of the ten parties that received at least one seat in the Dutch 2010 election. It turns out that there is a small but significant direct effect of social media usage.

A revised version of this paper was published in Political Behavior (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-013-9228-2)"

Ranked-choice voting has come to mean a range of electoral systems. Broadly, they can facilitate (a) majority winners in single-seat districts, (b) majority rule with minority representation in multi-seat districts, or (c) majority sweeps in multiseat districts. Further, such systems can combine with rules to encourage/discourage slate voting. This article describes five major versions used, abandoned, and/or proposed for US public elections: alternative vote, single transferable vote, block-preferential voting, the bottoms-up system, and alternative vote with numbered posts. It then considers each from the perspective of a 'political strategist.' Simple models of voting (one with two parties, another with three) draw attention to real-world strategic issues: effects on minority representation, importance of party cues, and reasons for the political strategist to care about how voters rank choices. Unsurprisingly, different rules produce different outcomes with the same sets of ballots. Specific problems from the strategist's perspective are: 'majority reversal,' serving 'two masters,' and undisciplined third-party voters (or 'pure' independents). Some of these stem from well-known phenomena, e.g., ranking truncation and 'vote leakage.' The article also alludes to 'vote-management' tactics, i.e., rationing nominations and ensuring even distributions of first-choice votes. Illustrative examples come from American history and comparative politics. A running theme is the two-pronged failure of the Progressive Era reform wave: with respect to minority representation, then ranked voting's durability.

This paper sets out to show whether constituency campaign effects exist, particularly in the context of a preferential electoral system such as Aus-tralia's. Data from the 1993 Australian Election Study suggest that, despite the best efforts of the candidates, local campaigning has a very limited impact on the vote. The paper considers a range of possible explanations for this limited impact: displacement, MPs' perceptions of their role, sources of campaign information, the importance of party labels in Aus-tralia, party discipline. It concludes with an explanation for the apparent paradox of why candidates bother campaigning when it does not make a difference to their vote.

U ovom radu se uporednom praksom različitih država
razmatra na koji način je moguće prevazići nedostatke sadašnjeg izbornog sistema Republike Srbije. Nedostatak odgovornosti poslanika, kao posledicu zatvorenih lista, moguće je preduprediti uvođenjem preferencijalnog glasanja fleksibilnim listama za parlamentarne izbore. Povećanjem broja izbornih jedinica znatno bi doprinelo boljoj geografskoj predstavljenosti manjih opština koje do sada nisu imale svoje predstavnike u parlamentu. Proporcionalnost izbornog sistema bi se očuvala pomoću korektivnih mesta koja bi se osvajala na nivou Republike.

And so, the election analyses continue. Many valid points have been made, about why the ALP won, why the Coalition lost, why the Greens did so well, why the so-called "teals" emerged, why the Liberal moderates were shown the exit door, why Western Australia turned on the Government, and so on. Bob Day of the Australian Family Party (and formerly of Family First), suggested three reasons for the abandonment of the Liberals (the Nationals didn't lose any seats, as per other recent elections). He called them "family, faith and freedom". But there is another story about the election of 2022, the post-Covid election. It is the phenomenally low voter turnout. To use the most overused phrase of our time, it was, indeed, "unprecedented". Well, since compulsory voting was introduced down under in 1924. As Adam Piggott at Pushing Rubber Downhill and XYZ points out: The media is comprehensively ignoring this subject, but even a cursory examination of the stats released by the Australian Electoral Commission reveals that over 30% of registered voters boycotted the 2022 federal election.

This article deals with ballot order effect in preferential voting in general elections in Slovakia. Previous research in this field has primarily focused on countries whose elections are based either on single-member districts or on lists with fewer candidates. This article aims to analyze a case of a different nature. Slovakia uses a proportional representation list system with a single nationwide constituency where all 150 members of parliament are elected. Hence, most of the political parties create lists with a high number of candidates, which according to theory should enhance the influence of ballot ranking.
Using data from Slovak general elections between 2006 and 2012 with a sample of 7,587 candidates, this study provides strong evidence of the impact of ballot order on the results of preferential voting. The analysis in this article shows the existence of both the primacy and recency effects, that is, a positive bias of voters towards candidates listed at both top and bottom positions on a list. What is more, the multilevel models used in this article demonstrate that support for top-ranked candidates significantly increases as the size of the list increases. For the bottom-listed candidates, this trend is rather the opposite. These findings represent a valuable contribution to the debate in this area as they provide insight into the role of ballot order in electoral systems that use lists composed of numerous candidates.

This review article sets out to give an overarching presentation of Nordic research on political behaviour, which has constituted a vital subfield within Nordic political science since the 1950s. The aim of the article is to give the reader a sense of what characterises the development within the field and to point towards interesting research worth further exploring. The review covers some notes on the general progress within the field, a bibliographic analysis of publication patters complemented by a presentation of the dominating themes of research, and a discussion of methodological advancements. Research within the field rests on the strong legacy of the Norwegian scholar Stein Rokkan and the early influence of the behaviouralism and American research. The biographical analysis does, however, clearly demonstrate the leading position of Danish scholars in terms of both qualitative and quantitative indicators. From a methodological perspective, researchers within the region can be described as early adapters. The electoral programmes established in the middle of the 1950s in Sweden and Norway are among the oldest in the world, following on from the pioneering efforts of the United States which stretch back to 1948. Furthermore, recent years have brought about a significant increase in experimental research. Thematically, the research agenda has been dominated by, but not restricted to, electoral research. Sophisticated knowledge of how voters think and act at elections, but also of the changing role and behaviour of citizens within the Nordic sphere, has been developed over time.

Este estudio analiza el efecto de distintas estrategias de campaña electoral en los niveles de incertidumbre y variabilidad en la distribución de escaños legislativos, en el marco de un recientemente implementado sistema de voto preferente en El Salvador entre 2012 y 2015. La metodología empleada incluye el análisis cuantitativo de los resultados en cada uno de los partidos políticos mayoritarios, la identificación de mensajes de campaña en materiales audiovisuales y discursos y entrevistas a profundidad a actores relevantes. El principal hallazgo indica que el voto preferente permitió mayores niveles de variabilidad o incertidumbre en la distribución de escaños en la medida en que la campaña electoral presentó mayores niveles de personalización. Adicionalmente, el estudio abre nuevas perspectivas acerca de los efectos del voto preferente en otras temáticas tales como la personalización de la política, las relaciones clientelares en campañas, la disciplina partidaria y el sistema de partidos políticos

This study analyses the effects of different electoral campaign strategies on uncertainty and variability levels related to the distribution of legislative seats, under a recently implemented preferential vote system in El Salvador between 2012 and 2015. The methodology used includes a quantitative analysis of the results of each one of the majoritarian political parties, the identification of campaign messages in audiovisual materials and speeches, and in-depth interviews with relevant actors. The main findings is that the preferential vote allowed higher levels of variability and uncertainty in the distribution of seats as the electoral campaign presented higher levels of personalization. Additionally, the study opens new perspectives about the effects of the preferential vote in other issues, such as the personalization of politics, clientelar relations, partisan discipline or the political party system.

Lo studio dei voti di preferenza in Italia da sempre rappresenta un tema delicato, in quanto interessa il precipuo rapporto tra elettori e candidati, con effetti e conseguenze sulla rappresentanza politica, sul sistema politico e sulla qualità della democrazia. Proprio per queste ragioni, rischiano di risultare insufficienti quegli approcci che intendono descrivere e spiegare il voto ad personam solo attraverso le categorizzazioni della rational choice theory, considerato che i voti di preferenza tradizionalmente esercitano effetti differenti rispetto alla cultura politica di riferimento a livello territoriale, accentuando così antiche e nuove fratture tra Nord e Sud del paese. Storicamente, la letteratura internazionale ha dedicato una rilevante attenzione allo studio del cosiddetto “preferential voting”. Numerose sono, infatti, le argomentazioni teoriche e le evidenze empiriche sul tema in questione, già a partire dai primi decenni del Novecento. Nel dibattito teorico internazionale diversi sono gli studiosi che hanno sottolineato gli aspetti deteriori (clientelismo, political patronage, pork barrel) relativi agli effetti esercitati dai sistemi elettorali proporzionali in cui gli eletti vengono scelti tramite le preferenze (“open list proportional representation”). Non è un caso che tutte le principali democrazie occidentali non adottino i voti di preferenza per scegliere gli eletti a livello nazionale. Inoltre, importanti accademici italiani hanno spesso associato il voto di scambio e il voto clientelare all’impiego dei voti di preferenza. A prescindere dalle peculiarità del dibattito in letteratura, il tema da sempre suscita in Italia vivaci contrapposizioni nell’opinione pubblica, all’interno dei partiti e tra i partiti. Per i detrattori, i voti di preferenza esaspererebbero la competizione intra-partitica, incrementando altresì la conflittualità tra i candidati della medesima lista. Per i sostenitori, le preferenze (che risentono di una logica di tipo proporzionale) e le elezioni primarie (che risentono di una logica di tipo maggioritario) rappresenterebbero, al contrario, le più efficaci soluzioni per rafforzare la capacità di scelta degli elettori, coinvolgendoli maggiormente nei processi decisionali dei partiti e nelle dinamiche elettorali, tenendo presente che siamo nell’epoca della candidate-oriented politics e della valence politics.  L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è quello di esaminare l’evoluzione dei voti di preferenza attraverso l’adozione di una prospettiva di lungo periodo (1968-2015), prendendo spunto da quattro comunità politiche locali tra Nord e Sud del paese: Canicattì (AG), Carini (PA), Parabiago (MI) e Saronno (VA). Si analizzeranno i voti di preferenza di tutte le elezioni di primo ordine susseguitesi negli ultimi 50 anni (elezioni politiche 1968-1992 ed elezioni comunali 1970-2015). Si badi bene che molti di questi dati elettorali (disaggregati a livello di sezione elettorale), soprattutto quelli riferiti ai due comuni siciliani, sono in esclusivo possesso del dott. Mariano Cavataio. Siamo in presenza, pertanto, di un lavoro prevalentemente empirico di taglio diacronico, senza dimenticare però gli eventuali aspetti normativi che il tema solleva rispetto al contesto e al dibattito contingente (basti pensare all’Italicum 2.0). Dal punto di vista analitico-concettuale, si propone la distinzione terminologica tra “voto personale” e “voto personalizzato” in un quadro nazionale e internazionale non sempre così rigoroso nell’indicare questa differenziazione, tanto da considerare i due tipi di voto come indifferenziati in numerose circostanze. Altro punto di forza di questo paper è quello di definire meglio il tasso di voto di preferenza, tenendo conto di quelle regole elettorali (soprattutto della Prima Repubblica) che prevedono le preferenze multiple.

Key words: Comportamento di voto, frattura Nord-Sud, voto personale, voti di preferenza, comunità politiche locali, case-study analysis.

SOMMARIO:
Introduzione;
2. L’Italia delle preferenze. Evoluzione della legislazione elettorale sui voti di preferenza nelle elezioni di primo ordine;
3. Obiettivi di ricerca, scelta dei casi e risultati attesi;
4. Dati e metodi;
5. Analisi e risultati tra Nord e Sud del paese;
Conclusioni;
Materiali supplementari;
Ringraziamenti;
Appendice A: Colore politico dei sindaci dei quattro comuni considerati, 1946-2015;
Appendice B: Andamento elettorale delle principali liste nelle elezioni di primo ordine esaminate rispetto ai casi considerati, 1968-2015;
Brevi riferimenti bibliografici.

Luciano M. Fasano ha redatto l’Introduzione e le Conclusioni. Mariano Cavataio ha elaborato i Paragrafi 2, 3, 4 e 5 più l’Appendice. Sebbene il saggio rimanga frutto di uno sforzo collettivo tra i due Autori, la responsabilità intellettuale delle singole parti rispecchia questa divisione del lavoro.

In this article we use concentration of electoral support for individual candidates and divergence between party and
electorate preferences for candidates to test hypotheses about the party–electorate relationship. We test these using
data from preferential voting in Slovak general elections between 1998 and 2010. Our results suggest that low concentration
is associated with parties based on ideology and high concentration with parties based on leadership. Age of the
party fails to predict the concentration or the divergence. For coalitions, type of coalition matters in regard to divergence.
Furthermore, we document that divergence increases with the size of the electoral support, though this seems to be true
only for larger parties.

We examine minority representation resulting from modified at-large elections (cumulative and limited voting) used in U.S. localities in the 1990s. Hypotheses about the relative proportionality of descriptive representation under various local election systems are presented and tested. We find that CV/LV elections produced descriptive representation of African-Americans at levels similar to those in larger single-member district places, and at levels that exceed those from some small, southern SMD places. Results for Latino representation are more qualified. Our results offer encouragement for those interested in facilitating minority representation without using the acrimonious process of drawing districts on the basis of races. ecent decisions of the United States Supreme Court have directed increased attention at alternatives to districting for the purpose of minority representation (see Pildes and Donoghue 1995). In this paper we assess how modified at-large plans (limited and cumulative voting) might facilitate minority representation. We also examine how representation under these plans compares to that obtained with district and at-large elections. In previous decades, court interpretations of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) broadened the ability of the U.S. Department of Justice and minority plaintiffs to challenge local election plans that might dilute minority vote strength (i.e.,