Party Strategy and Public Mood in Japan Lewis Luartz (University of California, Riverside) What impacts do Japanese party strategies have on their electoral outcomes? Although the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has a near continuous hold of government in Japanese politics, many have simplified competition to a state of competition among other parties for the opposition […] Read more

Ambivalence Across the Globe:  Investigating the Effects of Political Ambivalence on Vote Switching in Multi-Party Systems Klara Dentler (University of Mannheim) Since the past two decades, vote switching has been on the rise. An under-researched dimension of this phenomenon is the impact of ambivalent political attitudes. Whilst the effects of ambivalence on vote switching have been investigated in the […] Read more

Démocratie et élections libres à travers les yeux des immigrants Anna Zagrebina (Université de Montréal) Les visions de la démocratie changent les orientations des gens vers la démocratie, affectent la satisfaction à l’égard de la démocratie et ont un effet significatif sur le comportement politique et sont donc devenues un sujet de recherche. Sur la […] Read more

Election-related Internet-Shutdowns in Autocracies Kristin Eichhorn (Chemnitz University of Technology) Eric Linhart (Chemnitz University of Technology) Contemporary autocracies face a digital dilemma concerning the provision of access to the internet. General access to free information and instant communication seems to be contradictory to non-democratic governance. Its mobilization potential may destabilize the regime. At the same […] Read more

Evaluating Performance in Opposition Dieter Stiers (University of Leuven) Recent scholarship in retrospective voting has shown that voters do not only evaluate incumbent performance when they go to the polls, but the performance of parties in opposition as well. So far, however, these studies could only speculate what it is exactly that voters evaluate of […] Read more

Social norms and electoral participation: doing what is right or doing like everyone else Maxime Coulombe (Université de Montréal) People tend to behave differently, often more in accordance with social norms, when they feel observed or when they know their behavior is monitored or disclosed to others. In political science, Get-Out-To-Voteexperiments have shown how people […] Read more

Can Part ID be a Proxy? The Measure of Party Ideology with Party Identification Nadjim Frechet (Université de Montréal)Maxime Blanchard (McGill University) Many research questions in electoral studies focus directly or indirectly on political parties’ position on specific issues. Unfortunately, parties do not answer surveys. Accordingly, it is much more complex to determine their position […] Read more

Partisan Semantic Overlaps: Floor-speeches and Ideological Position Benjamin Guinaudeau (University of Konstanz) Estimating the ideological position of Members of Parliaments (MPs) remains a challenge for political scientists. Different approaches have been developed including surveys, roll-call votes and floor speeches. Inspired by the measure of polarization proposed in Peterson and Spirling (2018), we present a new […] Read more

Message Distortion as a Campaign Strategy: Does Rival Party Distortion of Focal Party Position Affect Voters? Zeynep Somer-Topcu (University of Texas at Austin) Margit Tavits (Washington University in St. Louis) Do voters understand party positions? A growing literature is interested in answering this question but has limited its focus on parties’ own policy messages. In real […] Read more

Evolution of Party Polarization and Voter Polarization in European Democracies Semih Cakir (Université de Montréal) Traditionally, party competition in established democracies in Europe is mainly structured around the economic cleavage. However, scholars increasingly argue that political conflicts that motivate party competition and mobilize voters have been under transformation. There is growing evidence that party competition […] Read more