This article examines the effect that municipality size and local office have on election candidates’ results. We argue that candidates from the larger municipalities have comparatively larger relevant networks, both in terms of constituents and party grassroots volunteers. In addition, these candidates appeal to a relatively larger share of voters within the constituency. We expect that the relative size of the candidates’ municipality will have a positive effect on the relative number of preferential votes they receive in the constituency and will interact with the effect that holding local office has on the individual election result. While the empirical analysis does not show support for the idea that municipality size will have a significant effect, the expected interaction between local office and municipality size is confirmed. The electoral advantage of being mayor, alderman or local councillor seems to increase with the relative size of the municipality in the district.

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The selection of leading candidates by the political families, the so-called Spitzenkandidaten, is relatively groundbreaking as it is the first form of political recruitment organized at the EU level. The literature on candidate selection procedures has so far concentrated on national parties and their procedures. To our knowledge the analytical model has not yet been applied at the EU level. This article will fill this gap by examining the selection procedures of Europarties, more particularly for their EC presidency candidates, a novelty of the 2014 European Parliament elections. Based on the analysis of the procedures applied within the European People's Party (EPP), the Party of European Socialists (PES), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE), the European Green Party (EGP), and the Party of the European Left (EL), one of the main findings of this article is that the procedures are largely copy-paste from the Europarties' internal procedures for selecting a president. This can largely be explained by the lack of time and experience their party elites had in the run-up to the 2014 elections. We therefore expect the Europarties to further professionalize their selection procedures and start the process earlier with more high profile politicians to stand as candidates in 2019.

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Previous studies on intra-party competition have largely neglected the role played by geographic distance between co-partisan candidates. In this paper, we argue that candidates who live further away from intra-party competitors on the same party list benefit electorally from their remoteness. Moreover, we contend that the electoral effectiveness of exhibiting local personal vote attributesa theoretically and empirically well-established candidate strategy to cultivate personal votesalso depends on the geographical proximity of localized co-partisan candidates. Using a unique and untapped dataset of more than 6,000 Finnish election candidates' home address coordinates over four consecutive parliamentary elections, we run beta regression models to examine the effects of candidate remoteness and nearest candidates' local characteristics on intra-party vote shares. To measure the remoteness of a particular candidate, we develop a novel index based on the distribution of co-partisans over concentric circles around that candidate. The beta regression models and a battery of robustness tests confirm that geographic remoteness is associated with higher intra-party vote shares, and that nearby located localized candidates prove electorally harmful. Our findings have important implications for politicians' careers, party nomination strategies and future empirical research on intra-party competition.

Previous studies on flexible-list systems demonstrate that party selectorates promote candidates with a high number of preference votes to better list positions in the next election. This research note asks whether these rank promotions are limited to candidates in unrealistic list positions at the lower end of the ballot or also include candidates moving into realistic list positions (i.e. electorally safer highest ranks). Using a longitudinal data set of candidates for 18 parliamentary elections in Flanders (Belgium), we first successfully replicate the earlier established preference vote-effect on future list positions, but subsequently show that promotions from unrealistic to realistic positions are relatively rare. Moreover, preference votes do not seem to affect the ability to move upwards on the list or to receive a realistic position at the next election when controlling for incumbency and list position at the previous election. Robustness tests using different operationalizations for realistic position lead to similar empirical results. Preference votes do not seem to matter for realistic list positions.