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We study whether competitive legislative districts cause higher voter turnout. To do so, we employ rich data on the 2006 to 2020 elections in North Carolina. We make use of variation in district competitiveness due to repeated bouts of redistricting, a process in which district boundaries are redrawn. Specifically, we compare people who share the same districts in each legislative chamber (U.S. House, NC Senate, NC House) before redistricting but who differ in districts after redistricting. We match these people on demographics, party registration, and pre-redistricting turnout. We then track their turnout behavior in post-redistricting elections. For the U.S. House, switching from an uncompetitive "80–20" district to a competitive "55–45" district increases turnout by a rate of 1 percentage point per election of exposure. For the state chambers, the magnitude is 0.6. Effects are highly persistent and sum across chambers. They appear to be explained in part by a learning channel, where living in a competitive district induces people to believe that races can be competitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Padding is the practice of adding nonvoters (e.g., noncitizens or disenfranchised prisoners) to an electoral district in order to ensure that the district meets the size quota prescribed by the one man, one vote doctrine without affecting the voting outcome in the district. We show how padding— and its mirror image, pruning—, can lead to arbitrarily large deviations from the socially optimal composition of elected legislatures. We solve the partisan districter's optimal padding problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In electoral systems with districts that vary in magnitude, the number of seats to be filled in each district will be even or odd. We argue that such a variation has crucial political consequences, called the 'odd–even effect'. In low‐magnitude districts, elections are more competitive when the district magnitude is odd than even; the incentives for coordination are thus stronger in the former scenario than in the latter. Employing quasi‐experimental data from 780 districts in Spain's lower house elections, we show that the number of parties is smaller in low‐magnitude districts with an odd number of seats than in low‐magnitude districts with an even number of seats. The elite‐ and voter‐level mechanisms driving the odd–even effect are examined using data on mobilisation efforts and wasted votes at the district level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the revocation of Article 370 and re-organisation of the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) into a Union Territory of India in August 2019, many questions arose about how democratic processes would work under the new dispensation. Within the context of the 2020 District Development Council elections, this article critically examines the surprisingly successful performance of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the CPI(M), in the district of Kulgam, a constituency well-known for its historical ties with leftist politics. Investigating the factors contributing to the party's success, the article identifies the strategic approach by the CPI(M) to emphasise developmental issues, thereby challenging the traditional role of religion as a tool for mobilisation. Despite the strong local presence of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the left-leaning party, as part of a multi-party alliance, succeeded in gaining substantial electoral support in the seats that they contested. This study relies on primary data collected through extensive field surveys to highlight the unique electoral dynamics witnessed within this specific region, which gain added relevance in view of future electoral contests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important quantitative geography application area derives from the periodically repeating apportionment process of redrawing legislative district boundaries to guarantee equal voter representation through identical or equivalent population counts, a situation confronting the U.S. Supreme Court with gerrymandering rulings on a decennial basis. This remains a small geographic sample size domain, with states having between one and fifty-two (i.e., California) congressional precincts in 2023. Texas constitutes an informative case study because its sample size of thirty-eight exceeds the frequently touted minimum of thirty, and its 2020 increase was two seats, more than any other state, some of which experienced decreases. Hence, although all fifty states also have undergone internal population redistribution, the Texas redrawn boundaries offer the greatest opportunity for dramatic borderline changes. This article appraises outcomes of this Texas gain within its legal constraints as they pertain to a novel uniform distribution explicitly embracing spatial autocorrelation, a fundamental georeferenced data property. Its name is sui-uniform to differentiate it from the prevalent auto- model convention; this article furnishes its first empirical application. After accounting for spatial autocorrelation, the inferential conclusion for Texas is as preferred: Superpopulation geotagged voting-age populations conform to a uniform distribution, whereas racial and ethnic subpopulations do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With ever-increasing gridlock and polarization at the national level, many new policy changes in the United States have come at the state level. This includes legislation that restricts the right to vote, limits free speech and expression, and gerrymanders state legislative and congressional districts. A growing body of literature describes these changes, when taken together, as evidence of subnational democratic backsliding. Yet this literature largely ignores the effects of federalism on the structure of institutions within the states, particularly on judicial independence. In this article, I examine the relationship between measures of democracy and introduction of court-curbing legislation in the states. Focusing on instances of court packing, changing the methods of selection and retention, and impeachment, I show that heightened attacks on judicial independence are associated with other types of democratic backsliding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How, and under what conditions, does electoral violence influence voter turnout? Existing research often presumes that electoral violence demobilizes voters, but we lack knowledge of the conditions under which violence depresses turnout. This study takes a subnational approach to probe the moderating effect of local incumbent strength on the association between electoral violence and turnout. Based on existing work, I argue that electoral violence can reduce voter turnout by heightening threat perceptions among voters and eroding public trust in the electoral system, thereby raising the expected costs of voting and undermining the belief that one's vote matters. Moreover, I propose that in elections contested across multiple local rather than a single national voting district, the negative effect of electoral violence on turnout should be greater in districts where the incumbent is stronger. This is because when the incumbent is stronger, voters have lesser strategic and purposive incentives to vote than voters in localities where the opposition is stronger. I test the argument by combining original subnational event data on electoral violence before Côte d'Ivoire's 2021 legislative elections with electoral records. The results support the main hypothesis and indicate that electoral violence was associated with significantly lower voter turnout in voting districts where the incumbent was stronger, but not where the opposition was stronger. The study contributes new knowledge on the conditions under which electoral violence depresses voter turnout, and suggests that voters in opposition strongholds can be more resilient to electoral violence than often assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on redistributive politics has neglected the spatial concentration of rising inequality and its consequences on political preferences and electoral politics. In this article, I argue that the geographic distribution of inequality undermines the political logic of redistribution when elections are held under plurality rule. When inequality in the median electoral district is lower than in the nation as a whole, demand for redistributive policies and voting for left-leaning parties is concentrated in a few districts. This limits the legislative power left parties can amass while disincentivizing left parties from offering proredistributive platforms. I provide empirical evidence to support my argument using cross-national data on regional inequalities, local-level administrative and geocoded survey data from the United Kingdom, and comparative manifesto data. The findings offer a new explanation of why rising inequality has not led to more redistribution, which suggests that political geography can weaken political responses to inequality and electoral representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a mixed-methods, comparative analysis of the development of the urban-rural electoral cleavage in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States from the early 20th century to the present. Using aggregate election results, electoral district boundary files, and electoral district population measures, we construct a new comparable dataset of district election results and urbanity for the lower house of the legislature in each country. We use this dataset to measure the importance of the urban-rural divide for election outcomes across countries and time. We find that the cleavage has widened over time in each country, each arrived at its current urban-rural divide via a distinct developmental trajectory, which we interpret with reference to secondary literature. We conclude by discussing the significance of our findings for theories of both the causes and consequences of urban-rural divides and discuss the implications of our work for the comparative study of urban-rural cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This scientific article examines the system of electoral districting in the 2023 Sejm elections and its impact on the principle of equality of representation. The main objectives of the study are to analyse the relationship between the principle of equality of representation and electoral districting in Sejm elections, evaluate the compliance of current constituency boundaries with this principle, and assess the potential consequences of any changes in districting in the 2023 Sejm elections in terms of electoral representation. The research questions guiding this study are as follows: (1) How should constituencies be determined for the 2023 Sejm elections and what legal criteria should be applied in electoral districting? (2) Does the current districting system align with the principle of equality of representation? (3) Are there disparities in the size or demographics of constituencies that could result in unequal representation in the Sejm? (4) What are the potential implications of the current districting system for the representation of different political parties? (5) How do alternative scenarios of districting affect the principle of equality of representation in the context of the 2023 Sejm elections? The research employs an institutional-legal analysis, along with statistical data analysis and simulations, to model alternative districting scenario and evaluate their effects on the principle of equality of representation. The findings of this study contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the implications of districting on the principle of equality of representation in the 2023 Sejm elections. The research emphasises the significance of fair districting for ensuring equal representation and provides valuable recommendations for policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to reveal the impact of distribution inequality of electoral districts on the election outcomes in Jordan. Since 1993 elections, electoral laws and regulations have been adopted that underestimate population density in Jordan, meaning that some regions with lower population densities have obtained more parliamentary seats than regions with high population density, including the governorates of Amman, Irbid and Zarqa. Successive Jordanian governments' strategies have intentionally ignored electoral geography, which reduces the chances of mainly the Palestinian component obtaining significant numbers of seats in the Parliament. Governments have also sought to mitigate the chances of Islamic, Leftist and Nationalist parties obtaining a majority of seats in the Parliament, and thus being able to exert effective pressure to hold the executive authority accountable and responsible for its actions. In addition, low levels of confidence of most Jordanian citizens in Parliament have resulted in a lack of true desire to vote, which has led to an increase in the percentage of wasted votes compared with the cast votes. The study concludes that the executive authority's domination in drawing and dividing electoral districts as part of its hegemony and control over the general policy of elections has purposefully neglected population density and geographical criteria. In light of the study results, an urgent need arises to endorse an election law that accomplishes the standards of distributive justice, maximizes the role of supportive and opposition parties, raises citizen confidence in Parliaments, reduces the percentage of wasted votes and finally activates a truly representative Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (MICRC) met for the first time in 2020 after it was created via ballot initiative in 2018. The MICRC included thirteen Michiganders tasked with drawing state house, senate, and congressional districts. The newly amended Michigan Constitution charged the MICRC with incorporating a new criterion previously unknown to Michigan redistricting: communities of interest. Communities of interest (COIs) have played a role in redistricting law across several states, gaining prominence after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Shaw v. Reno as an ostensibly race-neutral "traditional districting principle." However, the concept is difficult to define. This Note is the first to study the MICRC's attempt to codify the cultural, historical, and economic interests of communities across Michigan, as defined by Michiganders themselves. Although the MICRC worked tirelessly to review the flood of public comments, it will need to modify its approach for the next redistricting cycle. We propose several substantive and procedural changes to improve the COI review process, including firming up a thematic, "bottom-up" approach, strengthening public outreach efforts, and modernizing the comment database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does introducing de jure political equality affect legislative representation and the identity of elected politicians? This article exploits differences in enfranchisement rates across electoral districts to present evidence on the consequences of one of the most sizable franchise extensions in European history, the 1912 Italian reform, which trebled the electorate and left electoral rules and district boundaries unchanged. Enfranchisement increased the vote share of left-wing social reformers but had no impact on their parliamentary representation, on the parliamentary representation of the aristocracy and traditional elites, or on political competition. I document and analyze elite's efforts to minimize the political impact of enfranchisement: social reformers were systematically defeated in districts that saw a surge in political violence as well as in districts where conservative candidates had signed a secret pact (the Gentiloni pact) with the Catholic Electoral Union. I discuss the implications of these findings for theories of democratization and elite persistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weighted voting involves weighting representatives' votes by the populations that they represent. Such systems have been adopted in legislative bodies as a remedy for malapportionment and are sometimes used to elect candidates for the executive branch of government. But they receive little attention. This article observes the neglected vices of weighted voting systems: they violate intuitive conditions of monotonicity and participation. These vices count significantly against the use of weighted voting, and reflecting on why they arise improves our understanding of axioms in social choice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the many promises made by politicians to their constituents, job creation is universal. Do firms strategically use job creation to exert influence? We take this question to the universe of firms in the United States between 1997 and 2018, linking each subsidiary to a congressional district. We find that firms open subsidiaries in more competitive districts, suggesting that firms employ politicians' constituents as a political strategy to build ties with vulnerable legislators. These patterns are also consistent with electorally insecure politicians exerting more effort to attract firms. Unlike other tools of political influence available to a firm, such as campaign contributions and lobbying, job creation is constrained by geography and time. We show that these patterns exist only for firms in geographically flexible industries, that local job creation increases a politician's electoral survival, and that subsidiary investments are correlated with longer tenures on valuable congressional committees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roman Republican elections especially during the Late Republic were a ubiquitous phenomenon. The small number of higher magistracies in comparison to the growing number of eligible candidates often led to a fierce competition within the political elite. To secure a win, competitors running for office made use of a whole spectrum of methods which often overstepped the legal and moral boundaries and eventually resulted in legal measures. The lex Licinia de sodaliciis enacted in 55 BCE is one of these measures. This article studies the lex by raising questions about its historic background, its target – electoral misconduct by organising sodalicia that is political associations within the voting districts – the trials conducted under the law, the effect associations had on Roman politics, and the Senate's effort to regulate them thorough legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To the growing literature on non-resident citizens' special representation, we contribute with a systematic examination of the role of descriptive representation of citizens living abroad in elections for extraterritorial districts. Using data for the 308 candidacy observations in three two-seat extraterritorial districts in five legislative elections held between 2007 and 2021 in Ecuador, for a total of 30 seats, we test four hypotheses related to the electoral rules, party-level, and socio-demographic factors of non-resident candidates. Ecuadorian non-resident candidates benefit from their incumbency position and party affiliation, along with left-wing ideological ascription and belonging to party organizations that pushed for voting rights abroad and that manifest an interest in emigrant issues. This article contributes to showing what gets emigrants elected in extraterritorial seats and offers a within-country comparison connecting elections with legislative politics across national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the misuse of political analogies, specifically the gerrymander concept, in labor law discussions, arguing that comparing union organizing to gerrymandering undermines the principles of industrial democracy. It examines how applying political models to labor law fails upon closer examination, potentially reducing worker voice and hindering democratic ideals both in workplaces and society at large.

As we look ahead to the 2024 presidential election, ensuring a fair, open, and accountable voting process is a key topic of discussion. Elections have become seemingly more contentious in recent years, including concerns of a rise in gerrymandering in voting districts across the United States. In Virginia, the 2021 Redistricting Commission, made up of eight state legislators and eight citizens, was given the task of drawing new district maps for Virginia's voters. However, the Commission failed to come to an agreement and the Virginia Supreme Court ultimately created the new maps. This article uses data from the Virginia Commonwealth University Wilder School Commonwealth Poll to explore the extent to which Virginians were aware of the Redistricting Commission (and could thus provide input during the process), perspectives on the Redistricting Commission's efforts, and perspectives on what should be done to improve the redistricting process. We conclude with recommendations for ways in which redistricting commissions could be changed in the future to ensure that their work is better aligned with public opinion, with a key recommendation of ensuring that future commissions are made up of experts and citizens, rather than consisting largely of elected officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für das Gesamte Genossenschaftswesen is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study aims to determine the political behavior of beginner voters in the 2020 Gowa Regency regional election in Kel. Paccinongang Kec. Somba Opu. The subjects in this study were beginner voters including: (1) novice voters, namely adolescents aged 18 years and participating in the 2020 regional elections for the beginner, (2) reports of agencies related to this study. This study selects informants purposively. By using descriptive qualitative analysis. The results showed that: 1. the behavior of beginner voters is very dominant using sociological approaches in making their choices. Beginner voters choose candidates for the regional head, namely the regent and deputy regent of Gowa Regency by emphasizing demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. The psychological approach is very minimal because this approach depends on the performance of political parties, and how to attract beginner voters. In addition to these two approaches, the rational choice approach places beginner voters making their choices with the tendency to choose candidates for Regent and Vice Regent by looking at their personal needs, namely the needs of their own families, it can be seen that they choose because they are based on the vision and mission of the candidate to help their lives. 2. Supporting factors are encouragement from parents, certain figures, and peers. In addition, the vision and mission of the candidates can encourage the interest of beginner voters. Inhibiting factors: it is the number of hoax news such as defamation and pitting both parties that makes beginner voters end to be very difficult to make their choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary Republican Party has been the site of asymmetric partisan entrenchment and factional infighting. We test whether factional pressure from a far-right faction (the Tea Party) exacerbated the party's rightward movement with a granular analysis of Republican factionalism at the congressional district level. We develop a measure of local factionalism using novel datasets of activist presence and primary contests. Then, we conduct a difference-in-differences analysis to assess whether local factionalism in the Tea Party era heightened Republican partisanship and legislative extremism at the district level. We find that districts that experienced factional pressure moved rightward on both measures. These findings help clarify how the Tea Party captured the Republican Party and support a focus on the role of party factions in fomenting partisan conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Wyborcze is the property of Lodz Scientific Society / Lodzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Linguistic variation across a region of interest can be captured by partitioning the region into areas and using social media data to train embeddings that represent language use in those areas. Recent work has focused on larger areas, such as cities or counties, to ensure that enough social media data is available in each area, but larger areas have a limited ability to find fine-grained distinctions, such as intracity differences in language use. We demonstrate that it is possible to embed smaller areas, which can provide higher resolution analyses of language variation. We embed voting precincts, which are tiny, evenly sized political divisions for the administration of elections. The issue with modeling language use in small areas is that the data becomes incredibly sparse, with many areas having scant social media data. We propose a novel embedding approach that alternates training with smoothing, which mitigates these sparsity issues. We focus on linguistic variation across Texas as it is relatively understudied. We develop two novel quantitative evaluations that measure how well the embeddings can be used to capture linguistic variation. The first evaluation measures how well a model can map a dialect given terms specific to that dialect. The second evaluation measures how well a model can map preference of lexical variants. These evaluations show how embedding models could be used directly by sociolinguists and measure how much sociolinguistic information is contained within the embeddings. We complement this second evaluation with a methodology for using embeddings as a kind of genetic code where we identify "genes" that correspond to a sociological variable and connect those "genes" to a linguistic phenomenon thereby connecting sociological phenomena to linguistic ones. Finally, we explore approaches for inferring isoglosses using embeddings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partisan preferences usually stand out as the major driving force behind voters' expectations about election outcomes. Apart from partisan preferences, however, purely individual‐level factors appear to be only weakly associated with forecasting ability. Some studies argue that we need to move from the strictly personal sphere to the interpersonal one to better understand the underpinnings of individuals' forecasting ability. This paper leverages data from 77 elections at the district, municipal, regional, and/or national levels in 10 different countries to assess the impact of social networks and social interactions on the accuracy of citizens' electoral expectations. The results cast doubt on the capacity of social interactions to influence citizens' forecasting skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the United States' 2020 presidential election, state legislatures have introduced and passed an unprecedented number of restrictive voting bills. While past research has looked at the state -level drivers of restrictive voting legislation, this project explores what factors predict which legislators within states push for these laws. Specifically, I ask whether district-level characteristics predict when lawmakers use bill sponsorship to send messages about their positions beyond those sent by simple roll-call votes. I use theories of geographical threat and racial resentment to predict where sponsorship of these bills is most likely. My results tie these theoretical expectations to observed legislative activity: the whitest state legislative districts in the least-white states were the most likely to be represented by lawmakers who sponsored restrictive bills, as were districts with the most racially resentful white residents. I conclude that, despite lawmakers justifying these restrictive laws by claiming that fraud is a major problem, race and racism are inherently tied to the introduction and passage of these bills. This raises important questions about commitments to multiracial democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the budgeting process in the recess forum of the Banyuwangi regency DPRD members has been implemented in a participatory manner. This study is located in the Banyuwangi regency, which uses a qualitative descriptive approach. Informants in this research were selected by purposive sampling, after which the data in this research were obtained through interviews, observations and documentation studies. The data obtained was then analyzed qualitatively with an interactive model. This study uses Participatory Budgeting (PB) theory, following Cabanes' thinking. The results of the study found that the recess forum of Banyuwangi regency DPRD members in terms of regulations did not explicitly regulate the form of participation while in terms of representation, it is still mobilization and instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As opposition to globalization grows, many governments seek policy responses. One response – the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund – provides support to workers in European Union member states who are made redundant as a result of globalization. Proponents argue that by offsetting some of the costs of globalization, the programme may bolster public support for international economic integration and the political parties that support it. I investigate the impact of the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund on voters' support for protectionist political parties using a difference-in-differences research design and official election results at the district and commune level. I also examine individual-level voting data. I find that in regions exposed to rising imports, assistance from the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund generates a small decrease in the vote share of one of Europe's most prominent anti-globalization parties, which ranges in magnitude from 0 to 1.5 percentage points. While consistent with the logic of embedded liberalism, the finding suggests that the theorized connection between compensation and support for globalization may be conditional rather than categorical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Debates is the property of Revista Debates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the outcome of the July 2023 election in Spain. Despite the right- and far-right bloc winning a higher share of the votes, the two main incumbent parties on the left (PSOE and Sumar) defeated the odds and returned to government thanks to a post-election agreement with six other parties, including the Catalan pro-independence political formations. We show how coordination in the left bloc was important in shaping the outcome. An increase in mobilisation and strategic voting across districts contributed to preventing the right-wing bloc from achieving an absolute majority of seats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In November 2020, Colorado voters were asked to repeal the state's Gallagher Amendment, a constitutional redistributive policy in effect since 1983 that shifted the local property tax burden away from residential property on to nonresidential property. This study explores how partisanship predicts support for repealing Gallagher. Republican and Democrat platforms both entail sociotropic messages to support repeal, but following through on these political ideals carries a salient and nontrivial pocketbook cost to residential property owners. If voters aligned with one party or another are more likely to support repeal, it follows that these voters are more willing to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. Using election precinct voting data, I find that Democrat-leaning voters were more likely to support repeal than otherwise similar Republican-leaning voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues related to electoral integrity and the conduct of elections has gained increased scholarly and societal interest, also in countries with very high levels of electoral integrity. In this paper, we study whether there are any socioeconomic inequalities in voters’ waiting time at the polling station. But primarily, we study whether negative experiences of the voting process, with a specific focus on polling station lines, is related to trust in the conduct of elections. We use survey data from the 2022 Swedish National Election Study together register data on individuals’ socioeconomic status, and municipal and election district data. The findings show that there are no socioeconomic differences between voters with shorter or longer waiting time at the polling stations. However, both negative experiences of the visit to the polling station and waiting time at the polling station is associated with lower trust in the conduct of elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant literature argues that ethnic minority representation in plurality systems will benefit from the presence of sizable co-ethnic populations. I argue that the threshold for election depends not only on a minority population's group size but a district's level of segregation. I show that residential segregation can facilitate the increased representation of ethnic minority populations. Contrary to the prevailing literature, however, I find that increased segregation levels in cities with sizable minority populations decrease the percentage of co-ethnics elected to office. I support this argument with evidence from an original dataset on the local representation outcomes of Muslims in England between 2011 and 2021, which covers 434 district council elections. Using threshold modelling, I introduce the concept of the population threshold, above which increases in segregation level decrease Muslim representation. This article contributes to the electoral geography literature on ethnic minority representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proportional representation (PR) electoral systems have become widespread because they are expected to ensure the representation of interests with small or geographically inefficiently distributed voter bases. Yet in reality, most PR systems consist of a large number of districts that vary substantially in size, and some have surprisingly low magnitude. Existing research shows that such differences matter greatly for political outcomes but offers no explanation for their origins. We argue that the design of electoral districts in newly adopted PR systems is systematically linked to electoral geography and partisan politics. If parties with concentrated voter bases can influence the design of the new electoral system, they will create a significant number of low-magnitude districts. In general, parties involved in designing districts benefit from electoral disproportionalities under the new PR rules. Empirically, we use newly collected district-level data for several Western European countries in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce new data resources to enable spatial and nonspatial research on Canadian elections, electoral history and political geography. These include a comprehensive set of distinct identification codes for every federal electoral district in Canada from 1867 to the present, a complete set of digital boundary files for these electoral districts, historical census data aggregated to federal electoral districts, and tools to connect our district identification codes to federal election results. After describing the construction and content of these new resources, we provide an example of their use in a comparative-historical analysis of district compactness in Canada and the United States. We find that, in contrast to the United States, postwar institutional changes to district boundary-drawing processes had little effect on district compactness in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A general election is an arena where political battles take place between candidates and upholding democratic values. However, general elections still follow non-democratic practices. Many political activists still rely on economic domination and clientelism to get votes. This political activism can reproduce social and economic inequality in a democratic election. Candidates with dominant political and economic power have the chance to win an election, whereas candidates without the economic capital and strong political will likely lose. The purpose of this study was to find out how candidate Amran Mahmud used his capital to emerge as the winner after fighting the political economy domination of another candidate, Baso Rahmanuddin. This work analyzes a case study of Amran Mahmud's victory in the regional head election in Wajo district in 2018. It used a qualitative approach with observation, interviews, and a document study. Data was analyzed using analytics software Nvivo 12 Plus. The results show that candidates without large economic resources and strong political support also have the same chance as other candidates and even won. It is highly dependent on the accumulation of forms of capital such as social, cultural, identity, religious, economic, and political capital. Social capital is influential in bridging trust within the voting community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do electoral institutions condition the electoral fortunes of parties under threat? In this article, we examine how Germany's mixed-member proportional (MMP) system has influenced the vote share of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), a party under threat which has consistently lost votes over the past two decades. Using the 2013 and 2017 waves of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we find that voters are likely to engage in "sincere" vote switching on both the district and party ballots and that they are less likely to engage in "strategic" vote switching when they cast their district votes than when they cast their party votes, which protects SPD district candidates. Moreover, voters who stay with the SPD when casting their district vote are also less likely to switch their party votes, which protects the SPD's overall vote share. We thus conclude that Germany's MMP electoral system serves as an institutional safety net for the SPD as a party under threat. Our findings have important implications for understanding the ways in which electoral rules shape voting behavior and how different rules can mediate the decline of parties under threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of campaign spending, generally greater for challengers than for incumbents, is conditioned by electoral rules and incumbency—normally seen as a dichotomous condition. But when an electoral reform changes the composition of districts, a legislator is an incumbent only in the section of the new district. In Chile, the 60 open-list proportional representation 2-member districts used until 2013 were combined to create 28 open-list PR districts for the 2017 election, thus making some legislators enjoy a higher degree of incumbency. With data from 1430 candidates in the 2013 and 2017 legislative elections, we report a nonlinear positive effect of campaign spending on electoral success in all district magnitudes. Campaign spending has a higher impact as the number of open seats increases and a stronger effect for incumbents whose old districts comprise a larger share of the new districts. Campaign spending matters differently for challengers and incumbents given the moderating effect of district magnitude, the number of open seats and the percentage of incumbency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The support of party elites in the primary has a strong influence on who runs in a primary and how well they do. Yet party elites do not always engage or coordinate their efforts. Moreover, theories of parties disagree about whether and where party elites should engage and coordinate in primaries, depending on their view of the relative importance of electoral and policy goals. This article examines party elites' engagement and coordination in primary elections in the U.S. House between 2004 and 2018. Consistent with theories of parties as networks of policy demanders, party elites are engaged in primaries in both competitive and safe districts. But, while party elites coordinate their efforts in competitive districts, they are less likely to coordinate in safe districts. Their disparate coordination efforts reflect different electoral priorities in these districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 redefined race relations in the United States. Yet evidence on its effect on Black office holding remains scant. Using novel data on Black elected officials between 1962 and 1980, we assess the impact of the Voting Rights Act on the racial makeup of local governments in the Deep South. Exploiting predetermined differential exposure of Southern counties to the mandated federal intervention, we show that the latter fostered local Black office holding, particularly in the powerful county commissions, controlling local public finances. In the presence of election by district, covered counties experienced Black representation gains and faster capital spending growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to study the massive and systematic extent of money politics in the 2017 elections of the Bireuen District. This study used a qualitative method with the participant-observer approach. Data were collected through FGD at Al-Muslim University in Bireuen and in-depth interviews with the relevant parties. The practice of moneypolitics in the Bireuen election was very immaculate and well-coordinated. It started by collecting the photocopies of ID and family registry cards and ended with distributing the money before and after the voting. The campaign teams in each village helped to assist this process to the villagers. The study found five major causes of money politics in the Bireuen District. First, the public confidence in the political elections has declined. Second, the political orientation of the community was pragmatic. Third, several candidates had the same power in the election; thus, they had no other choices but to give away money to the public in the hope of being elected. Fourth, the prevention of money politics in the local elections of the Bireuen regent was somewhat weak. The elections supervisory committee does not have the authority to punish the political money perpetrators but could only give recommendations to the District Independent Elections Commission (KIP). These recommendations are subject to being processed or neglected. Lastly, the regulation of money politics was also weak in the Bireuen regional election. This massive money politics in Bireuen could be prevented by establishing a concept and formulating policies in the form of qanun (Islamic bylaws) in Aceh. The qanun could cancel or disqualify the regent candidates if they are proven to have committed money politics based on convincing and legally binding evidence. The political parties could also be deprived of their political rights to carry the regional head candidates for a term of office. Aceh, through its self-government, has a special authority to produce regulations that do not contradict the higher regulation in Indonesia. The function of the qanun is to break the chain and the money politics system by imposing punishment on the regent candidates and political parties. This research has never been investigated before, especially the regulation potential to break the chains of money politics by establishing a qanun to be applied in Aceh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the effects of a volunteer-led postcard writing campaign intended to turn out registered voters to support specific candidates in two state legislative districts. After adjusting for known selection bias in treatment assignment, we find that the postcards had a surprising negative effect on overall voter turnout. There is no evidence of effects being conditional on socioeconomic status or prior voting history. Of several explanations for this unexpected result, the most promising is that the focus on a down-ballot race distracted subjects from being aware of higher-profile contests on the ballot that might have motivated them to vote. We encourage researchers and practitioners to take negative findings seriously and develop tests for the explanations we offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]