One well-known characteristic of participatory websites is that the distribution of contribution levels is highly skewed: most people who make use of the service contribute only a little, but a small minority, often known as 'power users', contribute a lot. These power users are understudied in the literature on online democratic participation: this article aims to fill this gap. Based on a unique observational dataset of hundreds of thousands of users of an electronic petitioning platform, we show that having more free time is an important determinant of becoming a power user, as is having a positive initial experience with the site. We also show that power users are both more effective than regular users and that their interests differ substantially from 'normal' users: meaning that these small groups have a powerful (and distorting) influence on overall outcomes for the site. ARTICLE HISTORY

Objectives This article examines whether voters look to the past or the future when forming their perceptions of the parties’ chances of winning. Methods We use OLS regression models to analyze panel survey data from the districts where the incumbent was defeated in the 2011 provincial election in Ontario (Canada). Results We find that voters’ expectations in the districts are mainly affected by the results of the upcoming election and not by the outcome of the previous election. We also find that expectations are influenced by the phenomenon of wishful thinking. Conclusions This study sheds light on how voters form their perceptions of the parties’ chances of winning.

How party strategies vary by electoral system remains largely unexplored in election studies. Using qualitative and quantitative data from Spanish national and European elections, we test how party strategies diverge between districted electoral systems and systems using a single national district. We use the number of visits to districts by the party leaders to determine if targeted party strategies are driven by district magnitude, the share of the population entitled to vote in every district, the number of districts or the strength of parties’ local organizations. Our results show that only the frequency of visits to districts by large parties are clearly affected by electoral systems and, more specifically, by the number of districts and district population.

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Social fractionalisation has been omitted in most influential cross-sectional studies on turnout, and when it has been included, evidence is, at best, mixed. This article addresses this gap from two perspectives. First, using aggregated data from 22 countries we show that turnout is inversely related to ethnolinguistic fractionalisation, even after controlling for institutional, political and socioeconomic determinants. Second, we rely on data from elections in two multilingual territories, Catalonia and Quebec, to examine both the direct and indirect causal mechanisms for which voting and the sense of duty of vote are affected by the individuals’ aversion to the opposite ethnicity and the relative size of ethnicities. Analyses show that those relatively more averse to mixing with others who are different to themselves have a lower propensity to vote and are less likely to construe voting as a civic duty when they belong to the minority group.