scholarly journals Conceived in Harlesden: Candidate-Centred Campaigning in British General Elections

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin Milazzo ◽  
Joshua Townsley
Keyword(s):  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
General Election ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Increasing Trend ◽  
Candidate Characteristics ◽  
General Elections

Abstract Recent decades have seen an increasing trend towards the personalisation of election campaigns, even in systems where candidates have few structural incentives to emphasise their personal appeal. In this article, we build on a growing literature that points to the importance of candidate characteristics in determining electoral success. Using a dataset composed of more than 3700 leaflets distributed during the 2015 and 2017 general elections, we explore the conditions under which messages emphasising the personal characteristics of prospective parliamentary candidates appear in British general election campaign materials. Even when we account for party affiliation, we find that there are important contextual and individual-level factors that predict the use of candidate-centred messaging.

The Costs and Benefits of Party Switching in Mexico

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yann P. Kerevel
Keyword(s):  
Selection Process ◽  
Original Data ◽  
General Election ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Party Switching ◽  
Selection Stage

AbstractAre party switchers successful at furthering their careers? Most research on party switching focuses on the decision to switch and with which party to affiliate. Less attention is paid to the costs and benefits of switching parties. Moreover, previous research examining the electoral success of party switchers has often ignored how costs vary between the candidate selection process and the general election. This study addresses this gap in the literature by using original data on the careers of Mexican federal deputies to examine the costs and benefits of switching parties at the candidate selection stage and during general elections. The results suggest that party switchers are more successful at winning ballot access than nonswitchers but are less likely to win office. These results help explain why ambitious politicians would switch parties, given the known risks of changing party affiliation.

Waking Up in the Poll Booth

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 901-910
Author(s):  
Robert E. Goodin ◽  
James Mahmud Rice
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Panel Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Waking Up

Judging from Gallup Polls in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, opinion often changes during an election campaign. Come election day itself, however, opinion often reverts back nearer to where it was before the campaign began. That that happens even in Australia, where voting is compulsory and turnout is near-universal, suggests that differential turnout among those who have and have not been influenced by the campaign is not the whole story. Inspection of individual-level panel data from 1987 and 2005 British General Elections confirms that between 3 and 5 percent of voters switch voting intentions during the campaign, only to switch back toward their original intentions on election day. One explanation, we suggest, is that people become more responsible when stepping into the poll booth: when voting they reflect back on the government's whole time in office, rather than just responding (as when talking to pollsters) to the noise of the past few days' campaigning. Inspection of Gallup Polls for UK snap elections suggests that this effect is even stronger in elections that were in that sense unanticipated.

scholarly journals Introduction (Special Edition – The Presidential Nomination Process)

2008 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 289-291
Author(s):  
Wayne P. Steger
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Election ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Special Edition ◽  
Presidential Nomination ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Democratic Country

Understanding why certain candidates get nominated is an important aspect of political scientists. This topic is a narrow one and influences a wider variety of subjects such as the political parties, general elections, and even the extent to which the United States is a democratic country. Presidential nominees matter—they become the foremost spokesperson and the personified image of the party (Miller and Gronbeck 1994), the main selectors of issues and policies for their party’s general election campaign (Petrocik 1996; Tedesco 2001), a major force in defining the ideological direction of a political party (Herrera 1995), and candidates that voters select among in the general election. This volume is devoted to presidential nominations and the 2008 nomination specifically.

scholarly journals Health in the 2018 Italian general election

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽  
Author(s):  
S Guicciardi ◽  
M Quargnolo ◽  
G Moser ◽  
R D’Avenia ◽  
F Toth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Implementation Strategies ◽  
General Election ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Health Related ◽  
General Elections

Abstract Background General elections represent a peculiar moment in which clear positions on relevant topics are more likely to emerge. Therefore, they may serve as a reference point to monitor policy development and to verify decision makers’ accountability. The aim of this study is to systematically examine the proposals on health issues in the manifestos of the 38 parties running in the 2018 Italian general election, comparing them with the contents shared on social media. Methods All the electoral manifestos published on the websites of each party and of the Italian Ministry of the Interior were collected and independently assessed by four evaluators. A list of 48 health themes grouped into 13 main domains into was then consensually created and used to classify the reported proposals. Parties’ official social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter) were subsequently screened for selected keywords to determine the frequency and the content of health-related posts. Results Thirty out of 38 parties included a specific section on health in their programmes or generally addressed healthcare topics. The most covered themes were health promotion and lifestyles, self-sufficiency of fragile populations, management of private healthcare and health workforce, although implementation strategies varied greatly and only in a few cases it was possible to compare them. On social media, health related posts represented less than 1% of the contents shared by any party during the election campaign. Conclusions In the 2018 Italian election campaign the majority of the parties’ manifestos explicitly addressed health issues but, apart from a few exceptions, significant differences were present in the themes and in the proposed solutions, mostly generic. On social media health was almost neglected. Despite its social relevance, health played a marginal role in the 2018 Italian election campaign.

scholarly journals ‘The enemy within’: Campaign attention and motivated reasoning in voter perceptions of intra-party conflict

2020 ◽  
pp. 135406882090640
Author(s):  
Carolina Plescia ◽  
Sylvia Kritzinger ◽  
Jakob-Moritz Eberl
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Party Strategies ◽  
Voter Perceptions ◽  
Broad Interest ◽  
Over Time

In spite of broad interest in internal party dynamics, with previous literature relatedly demonstrating that voters are not oblivious to party infighting, very little attention has been paid to the antecedents of voter perceptions of intra-party conflict. This article addresses this research deficit with the support of empirical evidence gathered over the course of the 2017 Austrian national election campaign. The study examines variations in perceived intra-party conflict over time, both across parties and within the same party. We find that although voter perceptions largely mirror actual distinctions in intra-party fighting, conspicuous individual-level variations can also be identified owing to attention to the election campaign and motivated reasoning in information processing. These results have important consequences for our understanding of voter perceptions of intra-party conflict and the role of election campaigns, with potential implications for party strategies during election campaigns.

scholarly journals The Malaysian General Elections of 2013: The Last Attempt at Secular-inclusive Nation-building?

2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farish A. Noor
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
General Election ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Opposition Parties

This paper looks at the Malaysian General Election campaign of 2013, and focuses primarily on the 1Malaysia project that was foregrounded by the administration of Prime Minister Najib Razak. It compares the 1Malaysia project with other projects aimed at nation-building, such as the Wawasan 2020 project of former Prime Minister Mahathir and the Islam Hadari project of former Prime Minister Badawi; and asks if 1Malaysia was truly an attempt at building a sense of Malaysian nationhood based on universal citizenship regardless of race or religion; and it also considers the response to the 1Malaysia project that came from the opposition parties of the country. Malaysia has experienced a steady process of islamisation that dates back to the Mahathir era, and the question of whether the political domain of Malaysia has been overcome by religious-communitarian markers and values will be raised in the paper as well.

scholarly journals For Wales, Do Not See England? An Analysis of the 2017 General Election

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura McAllister ◽  
Roger Awan-Scully
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
General Election ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Voter Choice ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Regional Analyses

Abstract This article analyses the 2017 UK General Election from the perspective of the campaign and results in Wales, a nation which had the most interesting election campaign of all the different nations. The election saw a stark contrast between the way the two principal UK-wide parties fought their campaigns and how the campaign impacted on results. Drawing on data from a post-election survey conducted in June 2017, we consider factors that shape voter choice, which affected the outcome of the election in Wales. We argue that the election internalised and reflected a new pattern of party politics that is likely to stimulate differential election outcomes across the UK; this requires a different approach to understanding election campaigns, one that differentiates between the nations and how every political party operates in each territory. This will help distinguish different political and electoral fault lines, as well as constructing a more granular analysis of the campaign’s impact on electoral outcomes. We conclude first that, to better and more comprehensively explain UK-wide elections, there is a need to provide distinctive national and regional analyses, and secondly, it is mistaken to assume that the same electoral patterns will always exist in Wales as in England.

scholarly journals Rethinking the funding of New Zealand’s election campaigns

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Geddis
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
General Election ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Broadcast Time ◽  
The Law ◽  
Auditor General ◽  
Major Donors ◽  
Campaign Advertising

The 2005 general election campaign was notable not only for its close-fought nature, but also for a range of deeply concerning, and in some cases undoubtedly unlawful, behaviour by various electoral participants. The Labour Party exceeded the statutory maximum on its ‘election expenses’ by at least $418,603, primarily due to the costs associated with producing and distributing its pledge card to voters. Furthermore, the use of parliamentary funding to pay for this campaign material prompted a post-election review by the auditor-general, which revealed widespread misuse of this source of funds by a range of parties and individual MPs (Auditor-General, 2006). The National Party’s negligence in failing to account for GST when booking election broadcast time meant that it was able to screen some $112,000 more in campaign advertising than the law allowed. Both National and Labour, and to a lesser degree some smaller parties, used anonymous donations and trusts to shield the identity of their major donors, allowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to flow into their campaign coffers from hidden sources.

scholarly journals Post Shared, Vote Shared: Investigating the Link Between Facebook Performance and Electoral Success During the Hungarian General Election Campaign of 2014

2018 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marton Bene
Keyword(s):  
Vote Share ◽  
General Election ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Electoral Outcome ◽  
Facebook Pages

This study investigates how candidates’ Facebook performance, measured by the number of average shares, likes, and comments per post, affects the personal vote they gained during the Hungarian general election campaign of 2014. The database contains three of the most voted-for candidates owning Facebook pages from all single-member districts. The results show that the average number of shares on candidates’ Facebook pages is positively associated with electoral outcome after controlling for, inter alia, the vote share of their respective party on list in the districts, whereas the numbers of likes and comments are not significantly related to the dependent variable.

The Divisive Primary Revisited: Party Activists in Iowa

1974 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Bruce Johnson ◽  
James R. Gibson
Keyword(s):  
General Election ◽  
Primary Elections ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Substantial Influence ◽  
Elite Group ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Party Support ◽  
The Many

This study was conducted to test the frequently made assertion that primary elections are divisive among party activists who participate in primary and subsequent general election campaigns. Analysis of data collected from 209 campaign workers personally identified by five candidates in two vigorously contested races for Congress in Iowa's First District indicated that the activists were an elite group on whom the primary had a divisive impact that was particularly notable among those who supported candidates who lost the primary. The alienation felt by many respondents who worked for losers in both parties adversely affected their general party support, voting, and the willingness to perform the many conventional activities necessary to a general election campaign, but it did not appear to have a substantial influence on the general election. Generally, those who defected were less experienced and less strongly identified with their parties than those who remained active. Moreover, most of the antagonism may be limited to the single general election; eighty per cent of all participants in the study expected to be as active or more active in future campaigns.

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