Determinants of disproportionality and wasted votes

Anckar, Carsten

doi:10.1016/s0261-3794(97)00038-3

Cited by 62 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Table 3 gives Gallagher's (1991) Least‐Squares Index of Disproportionality for each of the four blocks of data in Tables 1–2. This index can vary from 0 to 100 (with 100 representing complete disproportionality); proportional representation electoral systems generally have indices below 5 but Australian elections tend to produce values closer to those for first‐past‐the‐post systems (Gallagher, 1991; Anckar, 1997). Australia's AV system clearly produces more disproportional results when applied to first‐preference than to 2PP votes.…”

Section: Disproportionality In the Election Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geography and Election Results: Disproportionality and Bias at the 1993–2004 Elections to the Australian House of Representatives

Johnston

Forrest

2009

Geographical Research

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The Alternative Vote system used for elections to the Australian House of Representatives is generally believed to disadvantage the Australian Labor Party in contests with the Liberal and National parties. However, most analyses on which such conclusions are based over‐simplify the situation by not separating out the translation of votes into seats according to whether the election outcome in a district is determined using the first‐preference or two‐party preferred (2PP) votes. Analyses of bias at five recent elections which recognise that separation find little bias against either party in the districts where the determination used the 2PP votes (i.e. no candidate received a majority of the first preferences), but considerable bias in those where the outcome was decided on first‐preferences. Furthermore, that bias was not in one direction, but rather favoured the largest party in each of those contests. The reason for this is identified in the geography of support for the two parties, which produces the equivalent of a ‘cracked gerrymander’ in sufficient districts to have a significant impact on the outcome.

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Section: Disproportionality In the Election Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geography and Election Results: Disproportionality and Bias at the 1993–2004 Elections to the Australian House of Representatives

Johnston

Forrest

2009

Geographical Research

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“…Taagepera () argues that the GHI index only accounts for indirect effects of electoral laws, and for this reason the “effective threshold” or the district magnitude (Lijphart ) should be preferred as direct measures of institutional designs. In effect, the degree of disproportionality of an electoral system is affected by various features of the electoral law, such as the magnitude of the electoral district (i.e., the number of seats allocated within an electoral district) and the electoral formula (Anckar ; Anckar and Akademi ; Gallagher ; Lijphart ; Powell and Vanberg ; Taagepera and Shugart ). In general, a higher degree of disproportionality is associated with a smaller magnitude of the district.…”

Section: Data and Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral Rules and Public Spending Composition: The Case of Italian Regions

Santolini

2016

Contemporary Economic Policy

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This study investigates the effects produced by the electoral system on expenditure composition by exploring the case of Italian regions over the period 1986–2009. Empirical analysis shows that the regional current transfers expenditure distributed to families and firms significantly decreases when the regional electoral system moves from being proportional to mixed. Particularly striking is the reduction in preelectoral years under the regional mixed regime. (JEL D72, H30, H72)

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“…There are scholars who have examined the determinants of electoral disproportionality (e.g. Anckar 1997); nevertheless, that literature does not suggest any cut-off point that can be considered as a high level of disproportionality. However, I have been in contact with researchers who study electoral systems design, and they have suggested that a cut-off point for a high level of disproportionality should be around 10.…”

Section: Effectiveness: Conditions That Affect Legitimacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracies in crisis

Högström

2014

Contemporary Politics

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The main contribution of this study is to identify democracies in the world that are at risk of becoming non-democracies. It is hypothesized that if democracies have a low level of legitimacy and have low effectiveness, they are at risk of becoming non-democratic regimes. These types of democracies are called weak democracies. Of the seven democracies that are identified as weak democracies between 2000 and 2010, the weakest of them, Mali, has already fallen. However, looking at the results of this study, it is not surprising that the democratic regime in Mali fell. The other six countries that are identified as weak democracies are Benin, Mongolia, Lesotho, El Salvador, Belize, and Mexico. The democratic regimes in these six weak democracies should be observed in more detail in the future to predict whether they are close to falling and losing their democratic institutions, or whether they will recover and no longer be weak democracies.

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Determinants of disproportionality and wasted votes

Cited by 62 publications

References 9 publications

Geography and Election Results: Disproportionality and Bias at the 1993–2004 Elections to the Australian House of Representatives

Geography and Election Results: Disproportionality and Bias at the 1993–2004 Elections to the Australian House of Representatives

Electoral Rules and Public Spending Composition: The Case of Italian Regions

Democracies in crisis

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