Strategic Voting in a U.S. Senate Election

Minor parties and strategic voting in recent U.S. presidential elections

The Brexit cleavage continued to define politics in the 2019 general election. This posed a challenge for parties and voters on each side of the debate: how to coordinate in favour of their side in each seat. In this note, I examine the extent to which party (electoral pacts) and voter (tactical voting) coordination affected the outcome of the 2019 general election. On the voter side, I find that tactical voting was only slightly more prevalent than in previous election cycles. On the party side, I find that neither the Unite to Remain pact nor the Brexit Party’s withdrawal of candidates against incumbent Conservatives noticeably affected the results. Holding the structure of preferences in 2019 constant, Labour would probably have won a handful of additional seats in England and Wales (three on average but only one clear gain) by joining the Unite to Remain pact. The effect of the pact is limited because Labour successfully won over many Remain supporters from the other parties during the campaign. This meant that voters of the other Remain parties were only modestly more likely to prefer Labour over the Conservatives by the end of the campaign, and the pool of minor party voters was generally small in Labour’s target seats. The Liberal Democrats would have received around eight additional seats if Labour had joined the pact (again holding preferences constant).

This article explores the electoral performance of minor party and Independent candidates in Scottish local elections from 1974 to 2007. This is a period which began with a major restructuring of local government and ended with a change in the electoral system from first-past-the-post to the single transferable vote. It encompasses a second restructuring in the 1990s, the consolidation of the Scottish National Party as an electoral force, and the creation of the Scottish Parliament. Throughout the period, while there have been ebbs and flows, Independents and minor parties have remained significant players in local electoral politics in Scotland.

Strategic voting in the 1984 democratic presidential primaries

Simple plurality election systems (commonly known as ‘first past the post’) are often associated with the dominance of two political parties. Such systems tend to reward leading parties with a disproportionately large number of seats (the ‘mechanical’ effect) and provoke tactical voting, where voters switch away from trailing parties (the ‘psychological’ effect). We view tactical voting as a coordination problem. A group of voters wish to prevent a win by a disliked party (such as the Conservatives in recent UK elections) and must partially coordinate behind a single challenger (such as Labour or the Liberal Democrats) in order to do this. Crucially, voters have limited information on the situation within their constituency and hence there is no common knowledge of the game being played—tactical voting is a global game. We show that in this setting, voters will only partially coordinate. Furthermore, tactical voting exhibits negative feedback—tactical voting by others reduces the incentive for an individual to vote tactically, since they become concerned that they may switch in the wrong direction. We calibrate our model, and apply it to the UK General Election of 1997. Throughout England, we find that the ‘mechanical’ and ‘psychological’ effects tend to offset each other: tactical voting serves to reverse the Conservative bias that results from the geographic distribution of preferences.

Japan's new electoral system may or may not be good for Japanese democracy, but it is almost ideally designed for the study of strategic voting. No other existing electoral system provides political scientists with data on such neatly separated but simultaneous single-member districts (SMD) and proportional representation (PR) votes. Using candidate-level aggregate data, I find strong evidence for strategic voting: Candidates with a good chance of winning receive more SMD than PR votes, and those with little chance of winning receive more PR votes. Strategic voting explains not only the basic pattern but also several exceptions to the rule. In addition, I find that a realistic but relatively inaccurate ex ante prediction of a candidate's probability of victory produces a superior explanatory model than does a perfect ex post prediction calculated from the final electoral results. These results support the hypothesis that voters base their strategic voting calculations on simple cues available to them before the election.

This article examines local Chinese electoral politics in Sarawak during the 2016 Sarawak state elections based on a case study of two Chinese-majority marginal seats in Sibu district, namely Dudong and Bawang Assan. It examines the discourse and strategies deployed by the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) and the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) and other independent candidates in the two constituencies. Candidates of the former in both seats were prominent leaders who had left the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) – a major BN component party – to form a rival splinter party called the United People’s Party (UPP) and had contested as “BN direct candidates.” The article provides insights into how the intricate political dynamics on the ground shaped the electoral outcomes. Analysis of the voting patterns in polling districts provides a more nuanced understanding of the purported “increase” in Chinese support, revealing an urban-rural contrast. Both DAP candidates retained majority support in urban Chinese areas, albeit with reduced vote shares and absolute numbers due to abstention. Rural Chinese voters, on the other hand, manifested a clear surge in their support for BN, both in absolute numbers and vote share, contributing decisively to the victories of the two BN direct candidates. The findings are based on field observation, in-depth interviews with party leaders and informants, as well as analysis of polling district results of the two constituencies.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to use data from the 2008 and 2012 US Senate elections to examine the relationship between candidate size (obese, overweight, normal weight) and candidate selection and election outcomes.Design/methodology/approach– Using pictures captured from candidate web sites, participants rated the size of candidates in the primary and general US Senate elections.χ2 analyses,t-tests and hierarchical multiple regressions were used to test for evidence of bias against overweight and obese candidates and whether gender and election information moderate that relationship.Findings– Obese candidates were largely absent from the pool of candidates in both the primary and general elections. Overweight women, but not overweight men, were also underrepresented. Supporting our hypothesis that there is bias against overweight candidates, heavier candidates tended to receive lower vote share than their thinner counterparts, and the larger the size difference between the candidates, the larger the vote share discrepancy. The paper did not find a moderating effect for gender or high-information high vs low-information elections on the relationship between candidate size and vote share.Research limitations/implications– Further research is needed to understand the process by which obese candidates are culled from the candidate pool and the cognitions underlying the biases against overweight candidates.Social implications– Because of the bias against obese political candidates, as much as one-third of the adult US population are likely to be excluded or being elected to a major political office.Originality value– This study is the first to use election data to examine whether bias based on size extends to the electoral process.

List of Tables List of Figures Part One: Introduction and Background 1. California's Blanket Primary Experiment Bruce E. Cain and Elisabeth R. Gerber 2. Crossover Voting before the Blanket: Primaries versus Parties in California History Brian J. Gaines and Wendy K. Tam Cho 3. Political Reform via the Initiative Process: What Voters Think about When They Change the Rules Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan 4. Context and Setting: The Mood of the California Electorate Mark Baldassare Part Two: Crossover Voting 5. The Causes and Consequences of Crossover Voting in the 1998 California Elections John Sides, Jonathan Cohen, and Jack Citrin 6. Should I Stay or Should I Go? Sincere and Strategic Crossover Voting in California Assembly Races R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler 7. Peeking Under the Blanket: A Direct Look at Crossover Voting in the 1998 Primary Anthony M. Salvanto and Martin P. Wattenberg Part Three: Effects of the Blanket Primary 8. Crossing Over When It Counts: How the Motives of Voters in Blanket Primaries Are Revealed by Their Actions in General Elections Thad Kousser 9. Candidates, Donors, and Voters in California's Blanket Primary Elections Wendy K. Tam Cho and Brian J. Gaines 10. Strategic Voting and Candidate Policy Positions Elisabeth R. Gerber 11. Openness Begets Opportunity: Minor Parties and California's Blanket Primary Christian Collet 12. Thinner Ranks: Women as Candidates and California's Blanket Primary Miki Caul and Katherine Tate 13. Targets of Opportunity: California's Blanket Primary and the Political Representation of Latinos Gary M. Segura and Nathan D. Woods 14. Candidate Strategy, Voter Response, and Party Cohesion John R. Petrocik Part Four: Conclusions and Implications 15. The Blanket Primary in the Courts: The Precedent and Implications of California Democratic Party v. Jones Nathaniel Persily 16. Strategies and Rules: Lessons from the 2000 Presidential Primary Bruce E. Cain and Megan Mullin List of Contributors Index

Based on recent work that suggests that voters in proportional representation (PR) systems have incentives to cast strategic votes, the authors hypothesize that levels of strategic voting are similar in both first-past-the-post (FPTP) and PR systems. Comparing vote intentions in majoritarian elections in the United States, Mexico, Britain, and Israel to PR elections in Israel and the Netherlands, the authors find that a substantial proportion of the voters desert their most preferred candidate or party and that patterns of strategic voting across FPTP and PR bear striking similarities. In every election, smaller parties tend to lose votes to major parties. Because there tend to be more small parties in PR systems, tactical voting is actually more common under PR than under FPTP. The findings suggest that whatever the electoral system, voters focus on the policy consequences of their behavior and which parties are likely to influence policy outcomes following the election.

Starting from the premise that campaigns ought to have informational benefits for voters this study examines the characteristics of Senate electoral campaigns and their ability to facilitate “correct voting” as first described by Lau and Redlawsk (1997). Here, the political values and beliefs of voters are measured from the 1990 and 1992 Senate Election Studies to assess how far such beliefs match to their state's Senate candidates. The variation within Senate campaigns allows for a wider range of hypotheses to be tested about the conditions under which voting correctly occurs compared with prior studies that have focused on presidential elections. The findings are important in that they show a lower incidence of correct voting in Senate elections than in presidential races. However, this is moderated by individual knowledge, ideological sophistication, and a higher level of campaign intensity, all of which increase correct voting. The implications lend support to the normative value of campaigns in American politics.

The Political Parties and Campaign Finance Reform

Optimus has constructed models to predict the outcomes of the 2020 presidential and congressional general elections in collaboration with Decision Desk HQ. The model is an iteration from its 2018 U.S. Congressional model designed to predict the outcome of the election as if it were held today. The congressional model predicts the probability of a Republican (GOP) victory in individual House and Senate elections, as well as the number of aggregate seats expected to be won by each party (to predict partisan control of each chamber). The presidential model uses a similar framework to estimate vote shares and probabilities of victory for each major party candidate in each of the states. These estimates are then used to proxy electoral college predictions that determine who is elected as the next President of the United States. We provide a survey of features, feature engineering techniques, models, and ensembling techniques. We also provide some empirical results.

The literature on strategic voting has provided evidence that some electors support large parties at the voting booth to avoid wasting their vote on a preferred but uncompetitive smaller party. In this paper we argue that district conditions also elicit reactions from abstainers and other party voters. We find that, when ballot gains and losses from different types of responses to the constituency conditions are taken into account, large parties still benefit moderately from strategic behaviour, while small parties obtain substantial net ballot losses. This result stems from a model that allows for abstention in the choice set of voters, and uses counterfactual simulation to estimate the incidence of district conditions in the Spanish general elections of 2000 and 2008.

After three years of the first single-party majority government of the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) era, the 2023 general election in Aotearoa New Zealand will result in a return to the historical norm: a government containing a major party with one or more minor political parties in a formal coalition, or a minority government relying on minor parties for support. Thus, the employment relations policies, the priorities and the power of these minor parties becomes important for assessing the likely trajectory of employment relations policy (ER) in the coming three years. Indeed, recent polling suggests that minor parties will have an unusually large degree of influence. At the time of writing, opinion polls suggest that the combined support for the minor parties is at levels not seen since 2002, with support for the two major parties correspondingly low. This article analyses the positions of the various minor parties likely to be in parliament after the election and speculates on how these parties might seek to influence the employment relations agenda of the next government.