“…The system is clearly working to the advantage of the candidates occupying the top positions on the list. Just around 10 per cent of seats are attributed to candidates who would not have been elected under a closed list (Wauters and Weekers, 2008; Wauters et al, 2004). Few candidates reach the quota on the basis of their preference votes only, and the transfer votes often suffice to secure the election of the highest-ranked candidates, since most parties win fewer than four seats.…”
Section: The Belgian Electoral Systemmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In recent elections, around 60 per cent of the electorate decided to mark its preference for candidate(s) within a list. In the latter group, the average number of preference votes cast per voter is around two (see Wauters and Weekers, 2008), although a majority of voters cast a preference vote for a single candidate, only.Figure 1.Percentage of Belgian voters casting a preferential vote in elections to the Chamber of Representatives (based on official election results).…”
Our knowledge about how voters decide which candidate(s) to vote for under preferential-list proportional representation (PLPR) systems remains limited. In particular, it is debated whether incumbent MPs enjoy an electoral advantage over outsiders also under PLPR. We argue that such an incumbency advantage critically depends on candidate visibility (in the media) and differs across voters with varying levels of political knowledge. Our empirical analysis combines candidate information with rich individual-level voting data collected via “mock ballots” in the 2014 Belgian PartiRep election study. We show that the vote premium linked to incumbency increases with increasing media visibility, and while high-visibility incumbents outperform incumbents among the entire electorate, low-visibility incumbents enjoy an advantage only among knowledgeable voters. The results contribute to a better understanding of candidate voting and the incumbency advantage in PLPR. They also have implications for campaign strategies and the regulation of media access.
“…The system is clearly working to the advantage of the candidates occupying the top positions on the list. Just around 10 per cent of seats are attributed to candidates who would not have been elected under a closed list (Wauters and Weekers, 2008; Wauters et al, 2004). Few candidates reach the quota on the basis of their preference votes only, and the transfer votes often suffice to secure the election of the highest-ranked candidates, since most parties win fewer than four seats.…”
Section: The Belgian Electoral Systemmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In recent elections, around 60 per cent of the electorate decided to mark its preference for candidate(s) within a list. In the latter group, the average number of preference votes cast per voter is around two (see Wauters and Weekers, 2008), although a majority of voters cast a preference vote for a single candidate, only.Figure 1.Percentage of Belgian voters casting a preferential vote in elections to the Chamber of Representatives (based on official election results).…”
Our knowledge about how voters decide which candidate(s) to vote for under preferential-list proportional representation (PLPR) systems remains limited. In particular, it is debated whether incumbent MPs enjoy an electoral advantage over outsiders also under PLPR. We argue that such an incumbency advantage critically depends on candidate visibility (in the media) and differs across voters with varying levels of political knowledge. Our empirical analysis combines candidate information with rich individual-level voting data collected via “mock ballots” in the 2014 Belgian PartiRep election study. We show that the vote premium linked to incumbency increases with increasing media visibility, and while high-visibility incumbents outperform incumbents among the entire electorate, low-visibility incumbents enjoy an advantage only among knowledgeable voters. The results contribute to a better understanding of candidate voting and the incumbency advantage in PLPR. They also have implications for campaign strategies and the regulation of media access.
“…Yet, only rarely do candidates reach the threshold of preferential votes that allows them to overcome the list order (André et al, 2017). Recently, Passarelli (2020) confirms that preferential voting in Belgium, although clearly gaining importance since 2003 (Wauters and Weekers, 2008), is no important contributor to incumbents' turnover between subsequent elections. Nevertheless, the number of preferential votes in previous elections are used by selectorates to take decisions regarding list positions in future elections (André et al, 2017;Dodeigne et al, 2019), incentivizing Belgian candidates to run personalized campaigns (De Winter and Baudewyns, 2015).…”
Section: Case Selection: the Importance Of Candidate Selection In Fla...mentioning
This article identifies the party dynamics that drive candidate turnover, yielding crucial insights in the recruitment behaviour and nomination strategies of political parties. Inspired by the seminal demand and supply model of political recruitment, we contend that several dynamics trigger or discourage parties to renew their lists and increase or decrease the availability of candidates. A 'selectoral opportunity structure' consisting of these dynamics could imply discontinuity in the candidate selection process.Multilevel survival analysis is applied to estimate the odds of selectoral career termination for 11,678 candidates running for parliamentary election in Flanders (Belgium) between 1987 and 2019. The results suggest substantial career termination differences between political parties, driven by multiple aspects of the selectoral opportunity structure: electoral swings, party members and transformational party events. Our results attest to the importance of including party level characteristics and further exploring system level effects when studying candidate turnover in future research.
A classical question of political science is to what extent electoral systems influence voting behaviour. Yet, many of these studies examine how different electoral systems affect the election results in terms of vote distribution across parties. Instead, we investigate how electoral rules affect intra party preference voting. Given the importance of the debate on the personalization of politics, insight into how electoral rules shape intra-party choice is a valuable contribution to the literature. In our study, we focus on the effect of two specific rules: the option to cast a list vote and on a single versus multiple preference votes. The results of experiments conducted in Belgium and the Netherlands show that electoral rules indeed influence voting behaviour with regard to intra party preference voting, although differences exist between the Netherlands and Belgium. Moreover, we find that the option to cast a list vote equally affects votes for the first candidate on the list, as well as lower positioned candidates. This suggests that preference votes might be less preferential than has often been assumed.
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