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April 6, 2022

Can Marine Le Pen win the French presidential elections?

Giovanni Capoccia A second term of office for Emmanuel Macron remains the most probable outcome of the French Presidential election, but it is no longer a foregone conclusion. The race with Marine Le Pen now looks more competitive than ever, says Giovanni Capoccia. Read more

December 2, 2021

The media chooses who has won (and lost) an election – and it's not just based on objective electoral performance

Katjana Gattermann Media reports on elections often refer to the 'winners' and 'losers'. Yet, especially in multi-party systems, there is often more than one way to interpret election results. How the media frames election results does not depend only on parties’ objective performance, write Katjana Gattermann, Thomas M. Meyer and Katharina Wurzer. It also depends on also on party ideology Read more

November 15, 2021

Electoral systems and the futility of ‘tactical’ voting

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

October 29, 2021

In a democracy, does every vote count?

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

August 17, 2021

Why are people with migrant backgrounds so poorly represented in political office in Europe?

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

June 11, 2021

Polling booth, postal ballot or internet? The voting-mode preferences of Americans

Carolina Plescia Interest in postal voting has increased during the pandemic as a means to avoid in-person contact. But exactly who is choosing to vote by mail? Carolina Plescia, Semra Sevi and André Blais find that the biggest cleavage in US citizen preferences about how to vote is generational, not ideological Read more

June 8, 2021

Votes from expats could have produced a very different outcome in the Dutch general elections

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

May 25, 2021

Voters can close the gender gap in Latvia's forthcoming municipal elections

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

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