Costas Panayotakis
Costas Panayotakis recently exposed the fiction in the ‘Every Vote Counts’ thesis. Here, he explores the implications of that fiction for different electoral systems, notably those based on Proportional Representation and First Past the Post. In so doing, he reveals the futility of tactical voting Read more
Costas Panayotakis
Costas Panayotakis analyses the popular claim that 'every vote counts' in a democracy. He finds it is based on false assumptions and a misunderstanding of statistical probability. Voting and democratic participation, he concludes, are not based on individualistic self-interest but on some degree of idealism and solidarity Read more
Lea Portmann
In Switzerland, poor political representation of people with a migrant background is not simply the result of prejudice and deliberate penalising by voters. Lea Portmann and Nenad Stojanović show that it is also caused by voters systematically favouring native ingroup candidates Read more
Ekaterina Rashkova
Millions of people no longer live in their countries of birth, and this can distort political representation, argues Ekaterina Rashkova-Gerbrands. If expats had been eligible to vote in recent Dutch parliamentary elections, we would have seen more support for innovative parties such as the D66 and Groen Links Read more
Laura Dean
Candidate lists in Latvia contain only 38.6% women. Latvia is unlikely to improve women’s representation in its municipal elections unless Latvian voters adopt preference voting, and 'plus' their women candidates, writes Laura Dean Read more
Julia Schulte-Cloos
To understand support for right-wing populist parties, we need to analyse not just voters who disengage from established parties, but also those who never voted in the first place, writes Julia Schulte-Cloos Read more