Policy or person? The electoral value of policy positions and personal attributes in the Finnish open-list system

Abstract

Under open-list proportional representation (OLPR), individual candidates compete for personal votes and representation has a distinctly individualistic dimension. This article provides a unique analysis of this individualistic representational dimension, by comparing the effects of policy positions with personal vote-earning attributes on individual electoral success within the context of the Finnish OLPR. The study confirms that personal attributes related to experience, locality and celebrity status have a strong positive effect on candidates’ ability to attract personal votes. On a more novel account, it also demonstrates that even under decidedly complex electoral settings, policy positions matter for candidates’ electoral fortunes, and that candidates who take on moderate positions within the context of their respective party are more successful than candidates who deviate from the party-median.

Digging in the ‘Secret Garden of Politics’: The Institutionalisation and De‐institutionalisation of Membership Ballots in the Selection of Finnish Parliamentary Candidates

“…Equally, via the mechanism of the ‘alteration provision’ the district party will have the means to assemble a list which it believes will be most likely to maximise the party vote at the election stage. This will involve such things as reflecting the demography and ecology of party support in the district and assessing the vote‐earning attributes of individual candidates (Borg 2018; Von Schoultz & Papageorgiou 2019). Consequently, the use of the ‘alteration provision’ may involve the nomination of a candidate who did not participate in the membership ballot (say a former MP) or a candidate who came well outside the automatic selection places (say a young city architect) but has niche vote‐attracting merit that will appeal at the election stage.…”

Revamping the menu – or just offering what’s in stock? Candidate list volatility in open-list PR systems. Evidence from Finland

“…(Put and Maddens, 2013;Moral et al, 2015;Golden and Picci, 2015;Dahlgaard, 2016;Dettmann et al, 2017). In open-list systems, where the powerful vote-earning capacity of incumbency constitutes a significant advantage for the individual candidate, as well as for the party as a collective (von Schoultz and Papageorgiou, 2019;Isotalo et al, 2020), this tendency is likely to be particularly strong.…”

Do Citizens use Sociodemographic Characteristics as Cues to Infer Candidate Issue Positions?

“…On the other hand, this need not mean that there is no role of policy considerations at all. Schoultz and Papageorgiou (2019) report that having moderate positions within the party (on each of an economic and a cultural policy dimension) has a positive association with the personal vote in the Finnish 2015 OLPR elections. Population survey data referring to the same election show that voters with high levels of political knowledge or online media attention are more likely to state that issue positions mattered for their candidate choice (Coffé and von Schoultz 2020).…”