Alternatives to Democracy

This chapter argues that enlightened preference voting is likely to be superior to our current system. In enlightened preference voting, all citizens may vote. When they vote, they (1) register their preferences, (2) indicate their demographic categories, and (3) take a short test of basic, easily verifiable political knowledge. Afterward, all three sets of “data” are anonymized and made public. The government—and any decent political scientist or newspaper—can then calculate what a demographically identical public would have supported if only everyone got a perfect score on the test.

‘It’s a Long Way from Kuusamo to Kuhmo’: Mapping Candidates’ Electoral Constituencies in the Finnish Open-List Single Preference Voting System

This article seeks an insight into the nature of intraparty competition in an open-list single preference voting system, and it does so by analysing the distribution of votes for Centre Party candidates in the 40 or so municipalities making up the northern Finnish constituency of Oulu in each of the five general elections between 2003 and 2019. It builds on Grofman’s distinction between a geographical constituency and a candidate’s electoral constituency to map the ecology of candidate support in a constituency with (1) a larger than average district magnitude (M); (2) a significantly larger than average territorial magnitude (T); and (3) a substantially larger than average Centre party magnitude (P). Setting M, T and P within a party organisational framework, the article identifies (1) a significant disparity between levels of intraparty competition at district and sub-district levels; (2) several contextual factors that act more as disincentives than incentives to engage in personal vote seeking across the electoral district.

How candidate characteristics matter: Candidate profiles, political sophistication, and vote choice

Our study examines the influence of various candidate characteristics (sociodemographic profile, competence and experience, issue positions, and party affiliation) on voters’ preference for a candidate, and investigates the impact of voters’ levels of political sophistication on their likelihood of considering various candidate characteristics when deciding whom to support. Using data from the 2015 Finnish National Election Study, this study is situated within the complex Finnish open list system with many candidates at display and mandatory preference voting. We find that voters mostly argue to make their choice based on candidate characteristics with direct politically relevant information such as candidate party affiliation and issue positions. Candidate sociodemographic profile has relatively little stated impact. Overall, voters with higher levels of political sophistication tend to be more likely to consider a broad range of candidate characteristics. When investigating the relative impact of each candidate characteristic (that is, their impact relative to the other candidate characteristics) on voting behaviour, political sophistication increases the likelihood of saying to rely on candidate characteristics that are more demanding in terms of information processing such as competence and experience, and issue positions. Our analyses also show how different measures of political sophistication have distinct effects.

Who wins preference votes? An analysis of party loyalty, ideology, and accountability to voters

We study the distribution of preference votes across politicians with different behaviors and attitudes. There are two main findings. First, preference votes are concentrated to politicians who are more active in communicating their policy proposals and policy priorities. This suggests that preference voting may incentivize more transparency and communication among politicians, and, hence, be positive for accountability. Second, preference votes are concentrated to politicians who are more—not less—loyal to the party in their voting decisions, and to politicians who’s ideological and policy positions are mainstream—rather than extreme—compared to their party colleagues. Together with the first finding, this suggests that preference voting can strengthen the bond of accountability between voters and politicians without undercutting parties’ ideological cohesion.

Party, candidate, and voter incentives under free list proportional representation

Under free list proportional representation voters can: (a) cast preference votes for candidates; (b) cast multiple preferences; and (c) distribute preferences across multiple lists. Alternatively, they can cast a list vote. Our theory shows that office-seeking candidates face incentives to pursue the personal vote, while non-candidate partisans seek the party vote. Voters are in the cross-currents of these forces. Also, since preference voting is so cognitively and informationally demanding, voters have incentives to use shortcuts, especially (a) list voting; (b) casting fewer than their allotment of preferences; and (c) preference voting for well-known or highly placed candidates. We find support for our expectations using linear mixed-effects regression of the proportion of preference votes in candidate-level electoral data from Ecuador. Personal voting is more prevalent as magnitude increases, where the local party is strong, and for candidates that are incumbents, male, high on the list, and in the position of first loser.