Issue Salience and Candidate Position Taking in Parliamentary Parties

Research on parliamentary representation has traditionally assumed that political parties take clear and differentiated policy positions, but recent studies suggest that parties sometimes have an electoral incentive to present voters with a distribution of positions to select from at the ballot box. This article explores whether parliamentary parties pursue such a strategy through candidate position taking using unique elite and mass survey data from Denmark. The results illustrate that parties are highly unified on issues that are salient to their electoral brand, but that they develop a distribution of positions that is related to voter preferences at the district level on less salient issues. These findings have important implications for the way that representation works in parliamentary democracies.

Pairwise Line Labeling of Geographic Boundaries: An Efficient and Practical Algorithm

We present an algorithm that labels linear features with two matched toponyms describing the left and the right side of a line, respectively. Such a pairwise line labeling strategy is commonly used in manually produced maps to differentiate administrative or other geographic divisions. Our approach solves two basic tasks of the automated map labeling problem, namely candidate-position generation and position evaluation for a given scale. The quality of the name placement is evaluated by comparison to a set of established cartographic principles and guidelines for linear features. We give some results of our experiments based on real datasets. The implementation of our algorithm shows that it is simple and robust, and the resulting sample maps demonstrate its practical efficiency.

Is Candidate Rhetorical Tone Associated with Presidential Vote Choice?

Can voters be persuaded to support a candidate based on a candidate’s rhetoric instead of a candidate’s issue positions? Combining theoretical insights on voter decision-making drawn from valence theories of candidate position-taking with insights from theories of rhetoric and persuasion, the authors argue that candidate rhetorical tone can sway voters to a candidate’s side. Using DICTION 5.0, the tone of candidate speech in U.S. presidential elections is examined from 1976-2012. Candidates who present themselves using language that draws on themes of commonality, activity, and realism are more likely to win a citizen’s vote in elections. Rhetorical tone can sway voters, but only those moderate voters who are distant from both candidates. Rhetorical tone is unlikely to have an effect on voters who perceive high ideological agreement with the rhetorically-disadvantaged candidate.

Numerical Geometry of the Coupler Motion of a Planar 4R Closed Kinematic Chain

This paper studies the problem of analyzing the motion of the coupler link of a planar 4R closed kinematic chain from the viewpoint of constrained motion interpolation. The kinematics of the planar 4R chain is formulated using planar quaternions. The four-point interpolatory subdivision scheme for curves in the field of Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD) is extended to planar quaternions for the generation of an inbetween candidate position of the coupler link from a given set of four key positions. The candidate position is then checked and modified according to the kinematic constraints of the planar 4R chain. The resulting new inbetween position that satisfies the kinematic constraints is then inserted into the given set of key positions. In the early stage of this refinement process, each new inbetween position must be made to satisfy the 4R kinematic constraints exactly to ensure the correct motion. When there is sufficient number of coupler positions, one can use the unconstrained four-point interpolatory scheme to generate the inbetween positions to allow for fast animation of the coupler motion.