None of the Above: Protest Voting in the World's Largest Democracy

Who are “protest voters” and do they affect elections? We study this question using the introduction of a pure protest option (“None Of The Above” (NOTA)) on Indian ballots. Using structural estimation, we find that in elections without NOTA, most protest voters simply abstain. Protest voters who turn out scatter their votes among many candidates and consequently have little impact on election results. From a policy perspective, NOTA may be an effective tool to increase political participation, and can attenuate the electoral impact of compulsory voting.

Centrist anti-establishment parties and their protest voters: more than a superficial romance?

New centrist anti-establishment parties (CAPs) are successful competitors in Central and Eastern Europe. Due to their emphasis on anti-establishment rhetoric and a moderate ideological platform, their breakthrough is usually explained by voters’ dissatisfaction with existing parties. However, little is known about the ideological component of their support. Expectations on the impact of ideology on vote choice in the protest voting literature range from ‘pure protest voting’, which denies any impact of ideology, to a more moderate approach, which combines protest and ideological considerations. Using survey data, I confirm that CAPs attract voters with lower levels of political trust, but ideology also matters. The degree of ideological sorting, however, varies. While some CAPs mainly attract voters from one side of the political spectrum, others attract voters from the left to the right more equally. The differences in the initial composition of their electorates have implications for the parties’ future.

Die brandenburgische Landtagswahl vom 1. September 2019: Die SPD schlägt die AfD auf den letzten Metern

After a slow beginning, Brandenburg’s election campaign became dominated by the SPD’s and AfD’s struggle to come in first . This contributed considerably to an increase in turnout to 61 .3 percent . Although the SPD won the election with 26 .2 percent, it sustained substantial losses because its front runner Dietmar Woidke was less popular than in 2014, and the voters attributed less competences to the party in all relevant policy areas . The CDU could not benefit from this weakness, lost considerably and dropped back to the third place with 15 .6 percent . The AfD, which attracted ideologically convicted voters as well as economically, culturally, or socio-politically deprived protest-voters, moved forward to the second place with 23 .5 percent . The Greens won 10 .8 percent, the Left Party 10 .7 percent . The BVB/Freie Wähler remained at exactly 5 .0 percent, whereas the FDP failed to overcome the five percent threshold . The exploratory talks to form a new three-party coalition at first were overshadowed by an internal rebellion in the CDU but ended with a coalition of SPD, CDU, and the Greens .

POLITICAL SENTIMENTS OF WESTERN UKRAINIANS DURING ELECTION CAMPAIGNS OF THE POST-WAR PERIOD

The article considers the main manifestations of political sentiments of the population of Western oblasts of Ukraine concerning election campaigns of the post-war period. The factors determining the voting behavior of voters and causes of social deviations are analyzed. It is emphasized that the attitude of the Western Ukrainians to the Soviet election campaigns was primarily determined by the electoral experience they gained while participating in parliamentary structures of Austria-Hungary, interwar Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. The scheme of stratification of electoral sentiments of the local population by quantitative, social, and political, gender, and other indicators are presented. The dominant anti-Soviet views that were caused by the rejection of Soviet totalitarianism by Western Ukrainians, the predatory economic policy of the government, and activities of the national liberation movement are noted. The specific facts of dissatisfaction of the population with the Soviet electoral legislation, forms and methods of its implementation as well as some measures of the Soviet government aimed at the forced Sovietization of the region are stated. It is determined that the largest group of protest voters was the peasantry, which in the postwar period was in difficult material and living conditions and actively supported the participants of OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army). The geography of critical rhetoric suggests the similarity of electoral sentiments in different regions of the republic. However, if Western Ukrainians were not afraid to protest in public, the residents of Greater Ukraine hid their true attitude towards Soviet democracy because of fear of repression. It is claimed that the study of political attitudes of the population in regions where the Soviet regime has not yet been established, and peoplе’s consciousness was free of the Soviet ideological stamps allows reflecting their real state. Keywords: Western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, post-war period, Sovietization, elections to the Supreme Soviets of the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR, political behavior of the population.

The Left Party and the AfD

In the 2017 German Federal Election. The Left Party (Die Linke, or LP) saw its vote share in eastern Germany seriously erode. The main culprit behind the LP’s losses was the Alternative for Germany (AfD): 430,000 voters who cast their ballots for the LP in 2013 voted for the AfD in 2017. Why was this the case? This article suggests that the AfD in 2017 was able to attract protest voters, largely in eastern Germany, dissatisfied with the state of democracy and the political establishment in Germany who once voted for the LP. The LP and AfD have become eastern German populist competitors.

How the Electoral Policy of the Russian State Predetermined the Results of the 2016 State Duma Elections

The article analyses how the electoral policy of the Russian state predetermined the results of the 2016 State Duma elections. The factors leading to this predictability are described in detail. These were a combination of the introduction of a mixed electoral system, with the party of power winning in more than 90% of majoritarian districts in regional elections; gerrymandering during the establishment of electoral districts; changes to the system by which voters outside the borders of the Russian Federation were allocated to electoral districts; the change of election date (moving it to September) and the consequent reduced turnout in the cities more prone to protest votes; “rigged campaigns” and the systemic opposition’s unreadiness for serious disputation; new bans and restrictions on political competition, resulting parties and candidates capable of genuinely opposing the regime being denied access to the elections; a push among protest voters to boycott the election, de facto supported by the regime’s campaign managers; and weak campaigns by the democratic parties.

How protest voters choose

Political scientists have identified protest voting – voting for an anti-establishment party as a protest against mainstream politics – as a consequence of dissatisfaction with traditional political options. Yet we know little about what motivates people to cast a protest vote or why voters select one such protest option over another. Taking as its empirical referent the 2015 General Election in Great Britain, this article assesses the ‘protest choice’ in parliamentary democracies. We test three possible theoretical explanations for protest voting: ideology, mistrust of political elites and campaign effects. We find that the most important factors affecting protest choice are issue positions and campaign effects. The findings suggest that protest voting is a complex phenomenon that cannot be reduced to knee-jerk anti-politics reactions.

What has happened to the extreme right in Britain ?

Support for the extreme right in Britain has been relatively low in Britain in recent years and has not shown the surge apparent in a number of other European countries. The paper uses data from the 1979 British Election survey to examine the characteristics of care and peripheral National Front supporters at the time of their last surge in support, and then goes on to consider why support has remained low in recent years. The 1979 evidence shows that support for the National Front was strongly linked to racist attitudes but in other respects had a 'protest' character. It is suggested that the subsequent weakness of the extreme right in Britain may be due to its single-issue character and to the availability of more attractive alternatives for protest voters such as the Liberal Party.