The Effect of Municipality Size and Local Office on the Electoral Success of Belgian/Flemish Election Candidates: A Multilevel Analysis

Abstract

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.

Centralized or decentralized personalization? Measuring intra-party competition in open and flexible list PR systems

“…First, over the last years, a change in the formal rules has modified the access for incumbents to candidate lists. Earlier studies on the use of preference votes in Belgium (André et al, 2012;Thijssen, 2013;Put and Maddens, 2015) have shown that the presence of incumbents on the list of candidates has a positive effect on the use of preference votes. A change to the legislation, however, has reduced the capacity of parties to fill in their lists with a lot of such candidates.…”

Voting for locals: Voters’ information processing strategies in open-list PR systems

“…110 votes for C A in district D A and 90 votes for candidate C B , then the localness effect can be observed at the aggregate level as C A received 121 votes in total (55%) and C B only 99 votes (45%). Consequently, candidates from urban districts with a comparatively high number of voters, in relation to the other urban districts within the electoral districts, should benefit more from their residence at the electoral district level (Put and Maddens, 2015). The fifth hypothesis, thus, focuses on the residence effect at the level of the electoral district:…”

“…Tavits (2010) provided one of the first analyses of this type with a focus on Estonian elections. More recently, Put and Maddens (2015) provide an analysis of localness effects in the flexible list system of Belgium. In addition, the studies by Evans (2012, 2014) and Gorecki and Marsh (2012) focus on the question of how candidate-voter distance affects candidate choice in UK and Irish elections.…”

“…In addition, scholars often rely on between candidate comparisons (e.g. Tavits, 2010;Put and Maddens, 2015), which is problematic as local candidates are assumed to differ from non-local candidates with respect to other characteristics as well (Gorecki and Marsh, 2012).…”

Fighting over friends and neighbors: The effect of inter-candidate geographic distance on intra-party competition

“…A growing body of research indeed shows that candidates who are born locally or have locallevel political experience are not only electorally more successful (e.g. Tavits, 2010;Put and Maddens, 2015), but also considered valuable resources by party selectorates in personalized systems (Nemoto and Shugart, 2013). Other work discusses how and which voters look for local candidates (Jankowski, 2016;Blais and Daoust, 2017;Collignon and Sajuria, 2018).…”