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Electoral Performance (electoral + performance)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences80%

Selected Abstracts

The Political Economy of Polarization: The Italian Case, 1963,1987

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 1 2003
Riccardo Pelizzo
Economic voting in Italy has received scant attention in the literature, and the few studies available show little or no empirical support for economic voting hypotheses as applied to Italy. We argue that this dearth of results is primarily due to poor operationalization and study design. In contrast to previous studies that focused on the relationship between the state of the economy and the electoral performance of individual parties, we investigate the impact of prices, employment, and economic output on the polarization of the party system. Using data on seven Italian national elections covering the period 1963,87, we show that polarization is, in fact, closely related to macroeconomic performance. Additionally, in contrast to past studies of Italy, the results are robust with respect to the lag period of the economic variables. [source]

The Effects of the George W. Bush Presidency on Partisan Attitudes

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2009
GARY C. JACOBSON
Evidence from the eight years of the George W. Bush administration confirms that the public standing of the president's party rises and falls in concert with popular evaluations of his job performance. Reactions to the president affect the favorability ratings of his party, party identification measured individually and at the aggregate level,particularly among younger voters,as well as the party's electoral performance. Bush's second term, which provoked the longest period of low and downward-trending approval ratings on record, thus inflicted considerable damage on the Republican Party's image, popular support, and electoral fortunes. [source]

Systematically Dependent Competing Risks and Strategic Retirement

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2009
Kentaro Fukumoto
In many applications of survival analysis, the risk of an event occurring for one reason is dependent on the risk of the same event occurring for another reason. For example, when politicians suspect they might lose an election, they may strategically choose to retire. In such situations, the often-used multinomial logit model suffers from bias and underestimates the degree of strategic retirement, for example, to what extent poor prior electoral performance diminishes electoral prospects. To address this problem, the present article proposes a systematically dependent competing-risks (SDCR) model of survival analysis. Unlike the frailty model, the SDCR model can also deal with more than two risks. Monte Carlo simulation demonstrates how much the SDCR model reduces bias. Reanalysis of data on U.S. congressional careers (Box-Steffensmeier and Jones 2004) documents the strategic retirement of representatives, indicating that electoral pressure is more effective at turning out incumbents than previously recognized. [source]

It's the Economy Stupid: Macroeconomics and Federal Elections in Australia

THE ECONOMIC RECORD, Issue 235 2000
LISA CAMERON
In this paper we examine the impact of macroeconomic conditions on Federal electoral performance in 20th-century Australia. We find that the electorate penalizes a government for high inflation and high unemployment relative to trend. Real GDP growth and real wage growth were not found to have a systematic relationship with incumbent vote share at the Federal level. We also examine the voteshare of the Federal incumbent in three electorates: the safe Liberal seat of Kooyong, the safe Labor seat of Melbourne Pans, and the swinging seat of Latrobe. We find some evidence that unemployment affects electoral outcomes in the swinging seat, but no macroeconomic variables affect outcomes in the safe seats. [source]

The EU and the Welfare State are Compatible: Finnish Social Democrats and European Integration

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 2 2010
Tapio Raunio
This article examines how the Finnish Social Democratic Party has adapted to European integration. The analysis illustrates that the Social Democrats have successfully argued to their electorate that the objectives of integration are compatible with core social democratic values. Considering that Finland was hit by a severe recession in the early 1990s, discourse about economic integration and monetary stability facilitating the economic growth that is essential for job creation and the survival of domestic welfare state policies sounded appealing to SDP voters. Determined party leadership, support from trade unions and the lack of a credible threat from the other leftist parties have also contributed to the relatively smooth adaptation to Europe. However, recent internal debates about the direction of party ideology and poor electoral performances , notably in the European Parliament elections , indicate that not all sections within the party are in favour of the current ideological choices. [source]