Support Party Strategies on Important Policy Issues: Results from Swedish Minority Governments

The survival of minority governments depends on support from non-cabinet parties that strive to safeguard government stability while also fulfilling their accountability to the electorate. This article argues that non-cabinet parties' propensity to support the government depends on their desire to uphold distinctiveness when accountability is at stake. This even applies to opposition parties that are officially committed to minority government support and, as a trade-off, receive policy pay-offs. By analysing opposition party voting in 23 years of Swedish minority governments (1991–2018), the article suggests that ideologically distant support parties are more likely to oppose the government on their core issues since compromise would involve too-large concessions. These results question our understanding of support party pay-offs as a trade-off for minority government support and highlight the rationality of entering a support agreement, which gives the support party a certain degree of policy influence while also keeping a distinct party profile.

An Analysis of the Link between Individual Identity Traits and Radical Party Choice

While recent trends in the study of radial party voting have tended to focus on egalitarian attitudes and individual personality traits in their endeavor to explain radical party choice, the present study pits individual identity traits in the spotlight of ballot box behavior, using data from the World Values Survey and European Values Survey. We analyze the link between exclusive and inclusive identity (identifying with a more restricted ‘in-group’ versus identifying with a larger community) and the propensity to vote for radical right and radical left parties, using differences in individual identification with respondents’ home nation and as European citizens. The results show that exclusive individual identity is a good predictor of radical right party choice, even in the presence of redistributive and egalitarian values usually associated with left-wing voting. The results also speak to the literature on welfare chauvinism. While the presence of strong egalitarian and redistributive attitudes does indeed normally predict radical left party preference in line with previous findings, this relationship is complicated by the presence of exclusive individual identity, which moderates the former’s effect and can induce egalitarian voters to prefer radical right parties. In conclusion, the paper explores the interaction of identity and social class.

Did Gary Johnson and Jill Stein Cost Hillary Clinton the Presidency? A Counterfactual Analysis of Minor Party Voting in the 2016 US Presidential Election

Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote for president in 2016, but lost to Donald Trump in the Electoral College. Trump’s margin of victory in several decisive battleground states was smaller than the combined vote for the two leading minor party candidates: Gary Johnson, of the Libertarian Party, and Jill Stein, of the Green Party. The perception that Johnson and Stein “stole” the 2016 presidential election from Clinton is widespread, and potentially consequential for future minor party candidacies, but it has not yet been rigorously tested. In this article, we extend the analysis of minor party voting in the 1992 election from Lacy, D., and B. C. Burden. 1999. “The Vote-Stealing and Turnout Effects of Ross Perot in the 1992 U.S. Presidential Election.” American Journal of Political Science 43 (1): 233–55, by using data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to estimate a multinomial probit model of voting behavior—including outcomes for vote choice and abstention—and calculate the predicted probabilities that Johnson and Stein voters would have voted for another candidate or abstained from voting, had one or both of these candidates been excluded from the ballot. We then reallocate Johnson’s and Stein’s votes accordingly, to estimate Clinton’s and Trump’s counterfactual vote shares nationally and within key battleground states. Our analysis indicates that Johnson and Stein did not deprive Clinton of an Electoral College majority, nor Trump the legitimacy of winning the national popular vote. We estimate that most Johnson and Stein voters would have abstained from voting if denied the choice to vote for their preferred candidate, and that most of Johnson’s remaining voters would have supported Trump.

Crisis and Convergence: How the Combination of a Weak Economy and Mainstream Party Ideological De-Polarization Fuels Anti-System Support

When do radical parties gain support? Previous studies cite the economy and mainstream party ideological convergence as important. Responding to earlier inconsistent findings, I provide evidence for an interactive approach. Anti-system parties succeed when mainstream parties are simultaneously presiding over an ailing economy and failing to provide the diversity of political opinion for the electorate to meaningfully challenge the policies associated with this malaise, through which dissatisfaction with the status quo could otherwise be channeled. Two studies support this “crisis and convergence” model. At the aggregate-level, the anti-system vote is strongest during times of negative economic growth and widespread mainstream party ideological de-polarization. At the voter-level, the link between negative economic evaluations and radical party voting is stronger during establishment convergence and, vice versa, personal perceptions of convergence are themselves more closely related to support for these parties when the macroeconomy is sickly. Mainstream party homogeneity radicalizes the economic vote and strengthens anti-system challengers.

Using Motion Detection to Measure Social Polarization in the U.S. House of Representatives

Although previous scholars have used image data to answer important political science questions, less attention has been paid to video-based measures. In this study, I use motion detection to understand the extent to which members of Congress (MCs) literally cross the aisle, but motion detection can be used to study a wide range of political phenomena, like protests, political speeches, campaign events, or oral arguments. I find not only are Democrats and Republicans less willing to literally cross the aisle, but this behavior is also predictive of future party voting, even when previous party voting is included as a control. However, this is one of the many ways motion detection can be used by social scientists. In this way, the present study is not the end, but the beginning of an important new line of research in which video data is more actively used in social science research.

Multi-Winner Election Control via Social Influence: Hardness and Algorithms for Restricted Cases

Nowadays, many political campaigns are using social influence in order to convince voters to support/oppose a specific candidate/party. In election control via social influence problem, an attacker tries to find a set of limited influencers to start disseminating a political message in a social network of voters. A voter will change his opinion when he receives and accepts the message. In constructive case, the goal is to maximize the number of votes/winners of a target candidate/party, while in destructive case, the attacker tries to minimize them. Recent works considered the problem in different models and presented some hardness and approximation results. In this work, we consider multi-winner election control through social influence on different graph structures and diffusion models, and our goal is to maximize/minimize the number of winners in our target party. We show that the problem is hard to approximate when voters’ connections form a graph, and the diffusion model is the linear threshold model. We also prove the same result considering an arborescence under independent cascade model. Moreover, we present a dynamic programming algorithm for the cases that the voting system is a variation of straight-party voting, and voters form a tree.

Good Result or Bad Deal?

Poised to begin negotiations for EEC accession, Prime Minister Wilson called a snap general election and lost to Edward Heath’s Conservative Party. Heath was a life-long pro-European but there were opponents of EEC entry, led by the disgraced rebel, Enoch Powell, within Tory ranks. The Conservatives adopted the Labour government’s accession strategy. But, out of government, the Labour Party turned against membership. Pro-EEC Labour rebels, led by former Chancellor of the Exchequer Roy Jenkins, voted with Heath to secure parliamentary approval for accession. To prevent the Labour Party voting to take the UK out of the EEC, Wilson promised that he would renegotiate the terms agreed by Heath and put them to the electorate. The EEC countries, especially France, struck a hard deal with the UK and Heath was obliged to accept disadvantageous terms for UK accession.

Sorting between and within coalitions: the Italian case (2001–2008)

How do voters sort within an electoral coalition? Voting literatures on ideology, character valence, and issue ownership provide explanations for inter-coalition or inter-party voting, yet the coalition context remains understudied. Do voters in proportional coalition-based systems use the same ideological and issue-based heuristics ascribed to them in two-party systems that favor single-party government? Voting behavior in Italy in the 2000s is used to explore this question. This paper examines what motivates the voters of the large center-left and center-right coalitions, specifically whether ideology, economic issues, or other considerations lead voters to select their party of choice. Results indicate that, on average, voters select a coalition ideologically-proximal and deemed the more competent on issues, while they select a specific party based upon character and reputation issues. Findings thus suggest that voters sort for both coalition and party-specific reasons.