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The Curfews period of December 2015 to February 2016 in south-eastern Turkey was a time of collective violence in multiple forms, among which the Cizre Basement Massacres are the most known. The period of the general elections in June 2015, until the later and most recent attempt to carry out a military coup in July 2016, covers multiple curfews and military operations in the south-eastern regions of Turkey, and some social media material shared from the region caught international attention and provoked artistic as well as political responses. Zehra Doğan, a Kurdish journalist and artist, modified and re-shared some footage that was first posted in social media accounts of the special forces in Nusaybin and as a result was sentenced to three years in prison. She continued to produce artworks in prison, even though it was 'prohibited' for her to draw. She started to use her own body fluids, hair, newspaper, toilet paper, and any other available daily material in the prison to produce works of art. She also produced a series of work with her menstrual blood. For this article, I conducted two thematic one-to-one discussions with Zehra Doğan and studied her series of works produced with menstrual blood within the scope of mimesis and embodiment theories. Further sections of the article discuss: the function of these series of works for her acting out and working through processes of the collective political violence of which she became both a witness and a victim; methods of artistic transmission of political violence both for the artist and for the audience; and the possible ritualistic functions of using blood while producing work of arts in relation to collective political killings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Donald Trump's political campaign, Americans have appeared increasingly divided over public opinion issues and U.S. policies with the media seemingly reflecting these divisions. One of Trump's early initiatives was the "Muslim ban," which restricted visitors from seven Muslim‐majority countries. Focusing on the portrayal of Muslims in over 900 hand‐coded articles, our study uses multilevel modeling techniques to examine how newspapers changed their frames and claimsmakers in discussions about Muslims before and after Trump was elected. After the election, newspapers were more likely to include government claimsmakers and an immigration frame and were less likely to mention a radical terrorist leader or portray Muslims as violent. Trump's election and the ban may have ushered in a more sympathetic view of Muslims with more articles focused on them as victims of violence and negative expressions. Across counties, states, and newspapers and between the national versus local presses, we find almost no significant differences in how Muslims were portrayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provincial Liberal government, then led by McCullagh's good friend Premier Mitchell Hepburn, quickly moved to oppose the action and the I Globe and Mail i soon became a gramophone strongly supporting Hepburn's attack on the UAW. The McCullagh-King relationship Bourrie describes was not positive, with the wily King thinking McCullagh hopelessly naïve and the restless McCullagh convinced that King was too cautious and yesterday's man. [Extracted from the article]

This paper addresses the subject of letters to the editor as one of the longest standing forums for public discussion and debate by ordinary citizens. To show how the voice of ordinary citizens is presented in letters to the editor during national election campaigns over a period of ten years (2008, 2013 & 2017), we are focusing on the Austrian Kronen Zeitung: A newspaper with an exceptionally high market share of up to 40% during the examination period, a heavy focus on the letters section with three pages per day, and a self-declared willingness to take a stance, especially during election periods. Based on a quantitative content analysis of 530 letters to the editor and 525 articles in the politics section as well as survey data from the Austrian national election study on the political positions of the Kronen Zeitung's readers, we find that letters to the editor in the Kronen Zeitung do not reflect, but complement the articles in the politics section. The tone of the letters is more negative than that of news articles, but the letters closely reflect the readers' political positions, therefore offering identification with the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 15th Malaysian General Election (GE-15) took place on 19 November 2022 successfully. This time the general election was held a year earlier than the 5-year maturity period on 16 July 2023, which is the date of the swearing-in of members of Parliament for the 14th term. The GE-15 results show that there is a pattern of voter support based on a specific geographic location. Therefore, the purpose of writing this article is to analyze voter support patterns based on regional factors. Based on data analysis of the GE 2022 results, observations in the field and analysis of secondary sources such as journal articles and conference papers, the findings of the study show that PH continues to dominate the West Coast region of Peninsular Malaysia as well as in Sabah and Sarawak in urban and semi-urban areas with ethnic mix and Chinese majority, PN controls the East and North Coast regions as well as a small part in the West and South of Peninsular Malaysia in the rural areas of the Malay majority, namely in the East Coast Peninsular zone, namely Kelantan, Terengganu and East Pahang and Central Pahang; North of the peninsula, which is Perlis and Kedah and Penang Seberang Prai North and Central, North Perak, Central Perak; the western part of Peninsular namely North Selangor and West Selangor as well as West Melaka and South Melaka while BN remains in power in the rural areas of central Peninsular Malaysia but with a shrinking number of seats. Therefore, regional influence also affects the voting pattern and needs to be taken into account by the relevant parties to implement campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marked by the killing of a senior ICT professional working for the Electoral Commission and the invalidation of the presidential election by the Supreme Court, the 2017 Kenyan elections make for a good case through which to study how digital technologies shape contemporary electoral practice. This article examines the practice of electoral transparency through technology and argues that it can be conceived as a socio-technical device based both on distancing people from knowledge of the electoral infrastructure and on staging a simplified discourse on public access to the electoral infrastructure. Drawing on interviews with key actors in election technology implementation and ethnographic observations of public events around it, the article argues that digital technology has had three sets of implications for elections. First, it has shaped the electoral infrastructure and the nature of the final result (now a paper and digital hybrid). Second, it has shaped the distribution of knowledge among electoral professionals, giving a central role to ICT actors, objects, and knowledge in the definition of electoral transparency. Third, the centrality of ICTs in elections and the order of knowledge they bring are highly controversial and criticized by other electoral actors who demand for material proof for understanding the inner workings of elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Candidate debates are increasingly organized during elections in democracies and electoral autocracies. How do debates impact partisan divisions and preferences in these contexts? One theoretical perspective suggests that debates should amplify these preferences and divisions, while another implies debates should attenuate them. This paper evaluates these expectations by studying presidential debates organized during Malawi's May 2019 elections. With an experiment and national panel survey, the paper provides evidence consistent with attenuation: debate watchers were substantially more likely to vote across partisan lines (cross-party voting), became more favorable toward out-partisan candidates, and became less favorable toward co-partisans. Suggestive evidence on causal mechanisms shows that these effects were driven by policy persuasion and debates' impact on perceptions of the candidates' policies and qualities. Results advance debates about information processing, campaign effects, and voting behavior in new democracies and electoral autocracies, and have implications for electoral institutions' impact on partisan divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a special issue focusing on the intricacies of Turkey's party system and the evolution of Turkish party competition amid democratic challenges. The introduction provides a brief overview of each paper in this special issue, which delves into the relationship between economic factors and voter behavior, offering insights into the continued dominance of the ruling party. While doing so, the special issue specifically examines the 2023 Turkish General elections, presenting alternative perspectives on how the incumbent party maintains its electoral success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overriding principle of ballot design is that it should not confer any a priori advantage to one candidate over another. Ballot format should not determine or condition an election outcome. Yet, there is a sizeable body of evidence which demonstrates that in many circumstances the design of ballot papers and voting machines contravenes the normative assumption of electoral neutrality. In this article, we look at the impact of ballot paper design at local elections in the Republic of Ireland (hereafter Ireland). The article uses data from an experimental election study conducted at the local elections in Ireland in 2009. Overall the study finds some evidence of a primacy effect and it also demonstrates that candidates located in the middle of the ballot face a challenge as they receive the lowest vote shares of all candidates across the four replica ballots. This mid-table obscurity remains even when party affiliation is known. Thus, it can be argued that candidates placed in such positions incur a disadvantage. To neutralise this effect, the article concludes with a recommendation that a system of random ordering of ballot positions across ballot papers should be implemented so as to ensure that each candidate appears at each ballot position on an equal number of times. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper demonstrates a systematic geographic bias in the German mixed-member electoral system. This bias concerns the composition of the individual party groups, and, by extension, the composition of the parliament: The Bundestag is much more urban than it would be under equal geographic representation. The bias is caused by the distribution of list seats across districts: since parties have incentives to give the best list positions to candidates from their strongest districts, regions where the vote is more fragmented systematically get more representatives. Since the vote is more fragmented in urban districts, these districts have more MPs than rural districts. The paper empirically analyses Bundestag elections between 1994 and 2017 and demonstrates that geographic disproportionality has increased strongly with the growing fragmentation of the German party system. This affects substantive representation in terms of leadership positions and voting behaviour in the Bundestag. Unequal representation in the German political system therefore also has a geographic component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A unifying setup for opinion models originating in statistical physics and stochastic opinion dynamics are developed and used to analyze election data. The results are interpreted in the light of political theory. We investigate the connection between Potts (Curie–Weiss) models and stochastic opinion models in the view of the Boltzmann distribution and stochastic Glauber dynamics. We particularly find that the q-voter model can be considered as a natural extension of the Zealot model, which is adapted by Lagrangian parameters. We also discuss weak and strong effects (also called extensive and nonextensive) continuum limits for the models. The results are used to compare the Curie–Weiss model, two q-voter models (weak and strong effects), and a reinforcement model (weak effects) in explaining electoral outcomes in four western democracies (United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany). We find that particularly the weak effects models are able to fit the data (Kolmogorov–Smirnov test) where the weak effects reinforcement model performs best (AIC). Additionally, we show how the institutional structure shapes the process of opinion formation. By focusing on the dynamics of opinion formation preceding the act of voting, the models discussed in this paper give insights both into the empirical explanation of elections as such, as well as important aspects of the theory of democracy. Therefore, this paper shows the usefulness of an interdisciplinary approach in studying real world political outcomes by using mathematical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has instrumentalised the Turkish army by conducting military operations in the run-up to elections. Although ending military tutelage has been interpreted in other countries as a sign of the professionalisation of the army, in Turkey it has done the opposite: the civilianisation discourse and civilian hegemony over military institutions have led to the instrumentalisation of the army. I demonstrate that the number of military operations significantly increased in the lead-up to elections, which strongly indicates the extent of instrumentalisation. Previous studies have primarily focused on the army’s praetorian role, neglecting the instrumentalisation process in which the military is engaged. This paper analyses the operational aspect of the army and introduces the concept of instrumentalisation. I contend that the cessation of military tutelage in Turkey has resulted in the securitisation of both society and politics. The failed coup in 2016, the double elections of 2015, and the heightened interest in the defence sector during election periods provide strong grounds for examining the instrumentalisation hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper discusses the reality of electoral governance in Algeria, after the issuance of law No. 21-01 regulating elections, which was issued on March 10, 2021, and the subsequent legislative and local elections in the same year. The paper questions the extent to which governance indicators are applied in the electoral affairs in Algeria through the aforementioned past election entitlements, and the extent to which they are free from aspects of corruption or fraud. The integrity and credibility of elections is considered essential in the democratic process of any country, given that it produces future elites capable of managing people's concerns and hopes, and formulate development strategies that are in the interest of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The victory of the Blank Column in the Regional Elections has an impact on the appointment of the Acting Regional Head to run the regional government until the election of the Regional Head in the next Regional Election. The Acting Regional Head is given the task of replacing the definitive Regional Head but there are differences in its application. In this paper, the scope of authority of the Acting Regional Head is discussed using normative juridical research with a statutory approach or statute approach and a conceptual or conceptual approach or conceptual or conceptual approach or conceptual acceptal acpproach. The results of this study show that juridically assigning tasks to the Acting Regional Head is inconsistent and hinders the course of regional autonomy. This paper also discusses alternative arrangements for the Acting Regional Head to be in line with the principle of regional autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars concur that free and fair elections are essential for proper democratic functioning, but our understanding of the political effects of democratic voting systems is incomplete. This article mitigates the gap by exploiting the gradual transformation of voting systems and ballot structures in Brazil's 1998 executive elections to study the relationship between voting systems and viable and nonviable candidates' vote shares, using regression discontinuity design. It finds that the introduction of electronic voting concentrated vote shares among viable candidates and thus exhibited electoral bias. We posit that this result occurred because viable candidates were better able to communicate the information that electronic voters needed to cast valid ballots than were their nonviable counterparts. The article uses survey data to demonstrate that electronic voters responded to changes in ballot design and internalized the information viable candidates made available to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second I electoral continuity path i , transitions are initiated by stable ruling parties confident of their ability to thrive under democracy. Were these stable ruling parties created by a violent shock and an unsuccessful push toward democracy? For instance, protests, civil society forces, and sanctions can expedite the process of democratization but are more likely to do so after a violent shock or in the presence of a stable ruling party.[2] A structural factor such as economic development reduces the chances of shocks but enhances the probability of democratization if a shock occurs. [Extracted from the article]

The humble ballot paper is a defining technology of elections throughout the world. This article interrogates its contested past by demonstrating - over a long period and in the context of three contrasting countries - how and why it emerged in the early modern period and how it was then used, abused and regulated in the context of the expanded, and eventually mass, electoral arenas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ironically, by the time that the ballot paper was firmly established, its monopoly was already being challenged by mechanical and then electronic media, which may eventually condemn it to extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their unmistakable advantages, the use of voting machines in elections is a topic of vivid debates. This article focuses on the experiences of voters using three types of voting equipment: (a) a paper ballot, (b) a voting machine, and (c) a voting machine with paper audit trail. An independent-groups experiment was conducted in which voters had to cast a vote for a donation to a charity organization and afterwards filled out a questionnaire about their voting experiences. The paper ballot was considered to be the most anonymous way of voting, especially by female voters. The voting machine (with or without paper trail), on the other hand, was considered to be more user-friendly than the paper ballot and gave the voters more confidence that their votes would actually be processed correctly. No differences were found between the voting machine with and without paper audit trail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wartime violence and authoritarian repression against civilians take various forms. Past research has explored the causes and consequences of violence, but no previous work simultaneously assessed the long-term effects of different types of violence on political identities. This paper contends that indiscriminate attacks can reinforce ingroup identity, whereas the role of civilian agency in selective violence may have a detrimental impact. Equipped with original data capturing municipality-level exposure to both selective and indiscriminate violence during the Spanish civil war (1936–1939) in Biscay (Basque Country), this study examines its legacy on voting behavior (1983–2015). Results indicate that fascist airstrikes increased Basque nationalism while selective violence diminished the popularity of Basque parties. Individual and community-level evidence suggests that airstrikes fostered the intergenerational transmission of political attitudes. Violence can boost national identities, but it can also erode them: it depends on the type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geography has long played a significant role in American electoral politics. Candidates engage in "retail politics" by visiting fairs, festivals, schools, churches, and businesses, to meet and greet potential voters. However, systematically understanding where candidates are actually going has plagued prior work due to small sample sizes and lack of data availability. Presidential elections have been used with success in previous scholarship, but there are few viable candidates to compare within a single cycle. Utilizing competitive gubernatorial elections, this work attempts to address these deficiencies by utilizing social media posts to track multiple candidates in real-time across the 2018 campaign cycle at the state level. The paper tests competing theories of candidate engagement regarding travel decisions: do candidates (1) focus their attention on their partisan base or (2) try to attract independent or "swing" voters? Following an original and intensive data collection effort, we identified location-specific information for over 4700 campaign stops made by major-party candidates across seventeen states. Our results lend support to candidates spending time with their respective bases of partisan support, with Republicans going to rural areas with non-college educated individuals while Democrats travel to urban counties with a more diverse electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political representation of ethnic minorities in a liberal democratic system is a crucial step towards having the interests of ethnic minority groups heard. The under-representation of ethnic minorities in a political institution can exacerbate inequality between majority and minority populations and increase feelings of alienation among minority groups. As a country observing increasing ethnic diversity, Australia saw record-level ethnic minority candidates elected in the 2022 federal election. However, the shares of candidates and elected Members of Parliaments with ethnic minority backgrounds are still much lower than their relative shares in the population. In this regard, Australia has lagged behind other major settler countries. In this paper, we examine the political representation of ethnic minorities in Australia's federal election. Drawing on data from the 2022 federal election and 2021 population census, we find a positive association between ethnic minority concentration and ethnic representation. However, for the two major parties, ethnic minority candidates are less likely to be in safe seats, even when the seat observes high ethnic minority concentration. Findings suggest that ethnic voting is evident but it is perhaps too early to celebrate higher levels of ethnic representation in Australian politics as political parties act as gatekeepers in safe seats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do religious citizens' election projections influence voter turnout? While previous studies have demonstrated the significant impact of religious orientation on individuals' general future outlook, little is known about the influence of religion on voters' electoral expectations and how these expectations affect voter turnout. In this paper, we employ a nuanced conceptual framework of election projections and examine the impact of religion on both the affective and probabilistic aspects of citizens' expectations regarding election outcomes. Our analysis draws upon original panel survey data collected in two countries, focusing on the 2021 Israeli general elections and the 2022 French presidential elections. The findings reveal a mobilizing effect of religious citizens' election projections in both Israel and France. Specifically, religious voters tend to have more positive affective forecasts about their projected election outcomes, consequently resulting in increased voter turnout. While affective forecasting plays a significant role in religious citizens' turnout, probabilistic certitude does not have a similar effect. We discuss the contribution and implications of these findings for research on religion and political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the dynamics of ideological party competition within the context of the 2023 Turkish elections. Focusing on the role and appeal of ideology, it provides insights into the changing landscape of ideological competition during this pivotal electoral period. The study examines whether ideology operates as a guiding principle for Turkish voters grappling with intricate economic and social issues. Despite acknowledging that economic concerns may not singularly determine ideological positions, the paper highlights the enduring significance of ideology in shaping perceptions. The transformative nature of the 2023 elections, marked by the emergence of new parties and electoral alliances, further underscores the relevance of ideology. Additionally, the article assesses the appeal of ideological competition by investigating voters who cannot position parties or themselves on the ideology scale. This analysis reveals that factors such as media consumption, education, gender, and political efficacy significantly influence the ideological appeal in the 2023 elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with how Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments navigated the politics of household indebtedness in Turkey and utilized it towards the 2023 elections. It argues that household debt is a political tool with positive and negative consequences for incumbent governments. Households have been able to access debt instruments such as credit cards, consumer credit, car loans, and mortgages in Turkey since the onset of financialisation in the 2000s. AKP governments have benefited from the micro-level household wealth/debt accumulation as well as its macro-level economic implications for the construction-led, credit-dependent economic growth model. On the other hand, household debt has had destructive societal consequences such as bankruptcies, divorces, and suicides that became commonplace in the opposition narratives. Pinpointing the responsibility for indebtedness among households, financial system, regulatory agencies, and government, as well as devising policy solutions, has become a political struggle in the months leading up to the 2023 elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the impacts of ranked choice voting (RCV) on voter efficacy is important as more areas consider adoption. The greater number of choices provided by longer RCV ballots may introduce opportunities for voters to misunderstand the ballot, make errant marks, or accidentally mark two or more candidates for one ranking, resulting in voidable ballots due to "overvoting." Using ballot data from the 2013 general election, the 2017, and 2021 New York City democratic mayoral primaries, this paper asks whether voidable overvote ballots are more concentrated in constituencies with lower levels of educational attainment, average household incomes, and differing racial make-ups, and if this relationship is more pronounced under RCV than traditional elections. In the first RCV election in 2021, voters in locations with lower levels of educational attainment and median household incomes had higher shares of overvote voidable ballots than those in locations with higher educational attainment and incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom and evidence from democracies suggest that more education should increase voter turnout. This paper revisits this issue by analyzing turnout in China's rural elections. Employing an instrumental variable strategy, I find that more education reduces turnout in rural elections. I provide suggestive evidence that more educated people may face higher opportunity costs of voting, which explain about a quarter of cross-province variation in education-turnout links. I also discuss the role of other factors, including Confucian culture and election stakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accepting defeat in the aftermath of elections is crucial for the stability of democracies. But in times of intense polarization, the voluntary consent of electoral losers seems less obvious. In this paper, I study whether affective and perceived ideological polarization amplify the winner–loser gap in political support. Using multilevel growth curve modelling on pre and post-election panel data from the British Election Study Internet Panel collected during the 2015 and 2019 UK general elections, I show that the winner–loser gap is indeed more pronounced amongst voters with higher levels of affective and perceived ideological polarization. Moreover, the results illustrate that polarized voters experience a stark decrease in their support for the political system following their electoral loss. Given the high and, in some Western democracies, rising polarization levels, these findings have important implications for losers’ consent and the stability of democracies in election times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foundational studies of political behavior find that university education facilitates the development of political attitudes and shapes socialization outcomes. But in unconsolidated democracies where identity is politically salient and ethnic political parties dominate, education may play a different role in shaping mass politics. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the consequences of political party intervention in annual university elections, a common feature of university life in the Middle East and the Global South. We draw on pre- and post-election surveys at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon to argue that ethnic political parties rely on partisan students to act as "party agents" who mobilize unaffiliated students through intensive peer-to-peer contact. Using a conjoint experiment embedded in both survey waves, we show that the university elections increase support in hypothetical national elections for in-group political elites and, to a lesser extent, ethnic political parties. By locating the university as an understudied site of competitive and contentious politics, our findings contribute new insights regarding the role of education in shaping political attitudes. We show that the persistence of ethnic political power can be attributed in part to party activity in less obviously political arenas that have not been systematically studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs on the commonwealth countries. Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated in Malta in regards to the Panama Papers leak. Bangladesh and Myanmar take a stand to repatriate Rohingya Muslim refugees. Protests in India by Hindu fundamentalists against the screening of Rajasthan's royal queen related movie "Padmavati".

Various electronic voting channels have been introduced across a range of countries. In some countries these new channels have proved uncontroversial, while in others, they remain contentious and have even been abandoned. Relatively little is known about whether and why voters have confidence in new and old voting channels. Australia provides a useful case for researching these issues, since it is a mature democracy in which election processes and outcomes are widely accepted. The 2013 Australian Election Study results show that in this context, voters have most confidence in paper-based voting and least in voting via smartphones. Positive political attachments, ease of voting and familiarity with technology are all associated with higher levels of confidence in voting channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party system institutionalization (PSI) is regarded as a critical underpinning of democracies, but its role in non‐democratic systems has been understudied. In this paper, we evaluate whether the concept has meaningful and perhaps unique implications for the durability of competitive authoritarian regimes. We argue that a modified version of electoral volatility – the most common measure of PSI in democracies – conveys useful information about PSI in competitive authoritarian contexts by signalling the ability of the ruling party to manage the opposition. To this end, we construct an original data set that disaggregates electoral volatility into ruling party seat change and opposition party seat volatility and further divides opposition party volatility into Type‐A and Type‐B volatility. We find robust results that democratization becomes more likely when decreases in the ruling party's seat share coincide with an increase in opposition party Type‐B volatility. This paper demonstrates that the concept of PSI has utility for understanding regime dynamics in competitive authoritarian contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William King's De Origine Mali has recently started to attract some attention in early modern scholarship. In a recent paper devoted to King's theory of free will, Kenneth Pearce identifies a "lacuna" in his text, namely the fact that King "never explicitly describes the process whereby election leads to action" (Pearce, "William King on Free Will", 4). In this paper, I analyse King's theory of 'election' (roughly, free choice) and Pearce's interpretation of it. I discuss his claim that there is a lacuna in King's account and argue that the text provides us with important suggestions on how election generates action. Therefore, no speculative proposal to fill the lacuna is needed. This, in turn, allows me to develop a reading of King's text that avoids a textual puzzle unsolved in Pearce's interpretation: while he maintained that every election is "with reason", my account can take King's text at face value and explain how some elections are reasonable while others are not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines electoral bias within US politics, including as it relates to malapportionment in the US Senate and Electoral College. Specifically, with the Republican Party gaining significant support in rural areas and the Democratic Party becoming concentrated in urban areas, there is concern that the US electoral system increases the probability that the Republican Party will win a much higher percent of Senate seats than its public support and repeatedly win the presidency without having won a plurality of votes, as was the case in 2000 and 2016. I explore this concern using a relatively new measure called the Directional Proportionality Index (DPIx). Applying it to the Electoral College since 1872 and the US Senate since 1918, this paper demonstrates that while there does exist a small pro-Republican bias in the Electoral College owing to malapportionment, the pro-Republican malapportionment bias in Senate races is far more substantial. However, as long as the percent vote for Democratic and Republican presidential candidates remains close due to partisan polarization, this small bias in the Electoral College is likely enough to lead to more cases whereby the Republican Party loses the popular vote but still wins control over the White House and the United States Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main questions that has resurfaced in the post-2011 Arab Uprisings era has been to what extent these public protests and the popular calls for political opening would result in democratization in the MENA region. Despite the conventional arguments that explain the persistence of authoritarian regimes as a derivate of cultural authenticity and patriarchy, the Arab Uprisings have unlocked the threshold of fear, and given rise to a new moment of political activism in the region. In light of this, one of the arguments of this paper is centred on the idea that during and after the 2011 Arab Uprisings, regimes did not travel similar trajectories in this region; as a result, it is not possible to talk about an 'Arab path' and/or an 'Arab regime typology'. This work draws its data from the opinion surveys conducted between 2017 and 2020 by the World Values Survey Wave 7, and aims to shed light on the current demands for and perceptions of democracy and elections in the MENA region. To that end, this paper will scrutinize the various trajectories in the post-Arab Spring era through the lenses of three selected countries. These countries are Tunisia, Jordan and Lebanon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion polls have become vital and increasingly visible parts of election campaigns. Previous research has frequently demonstrated that polls can influence both citizens' voting intentions and political parties' campaign strategies. However, they are also fraught with uncertainty. Margins of error can reflect (parts of) this uncertainty. This paper investigates how citizens' voting intentions change due to whether polling estimates are presented with or without margins of error.Using a vignette experiment (N=3224), we examine this question based on a real‐world example in which different election polls were shown to nationally representative respondents ahead of the 2021 federal election in Germany. We manipulated the display of the margins of error, the interpretation of polls and the closeness of the electoral race.The results indicate that margins of error can influence citizens' voting intentions. This effect is dependent on the actual closeness of the race and additional interpretative guidance provided to voters. More concretely, the results consistently show that margins of error increase citizens' inclination to vote for one of the two largest contesting parties if the polling gap between these parties is small, and an interpretation underlines this closeness.The findings of this study are important for three reasons. First, they help to determine whether margins of error can assist citizens in making more informed (strategic) vote decisions. They shed light on whether depicting opinion‐poll uncertainty affects the key features of representative democracy, such as democratic accountability. Second, the results stress the responsibility of the media. The way polls are interpreted and contextualized influences the effect of margins of error on voting behaviour. Third, the findings of this paper underscore the significance of including methodological details when communicating scientific research findings to the broader public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a vast literature in political science concerning the strengths and weaknesses of single member plurality (SMP) electoral systems. Some argue that PR systems are superior because they ensure better representativeness by reducing the distortion between votes received by a party and its seat share. Others say that the benefits of SMP in terms of accountability make the price of electoral distortion bearable. But what if there would be incremental institutional changes that could maintain the benefits derived from SMP elections and still reduce the distortion it causes? In this paper, we make use of an innovative research design to measure the impact of assembly size on seat disproportionality as measured by the Gallagher Index. We make use of Canada as an ideal case. In this country, federal and provincial elections occur at regular intervals, and the numbers of seats at play vary substantially between levels of government within a province. We find that increasing assembly size is associated with reduced disproportionality in a negative logarithmic fashion, making it an especially useful institutional tool to reduce distortion in smaller assemblies. We argue this research brings a new light on an ongoing debate about SMP systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital media plays a vital role for political parties' communication. Research so far has focused mainly on the use of social media for election campaigns, while little is known about party officials' use of social media for intra-party communication. Besides elections, key events for political parties are conferences, in which delegates play a central role in transmitting the party branches' perspectives to the party and vice versa. Therefore, this paper addresses a) the role played by social media regarding the communication of party delegates with their party branch, and b) the factors determining delegates' social media usage. To answer these questions, we drew on survey data collected during the 2018 party conference of the German Green Party. Based on multivariate analysis, our results indicate that party delegates' social media usage is rather low and driven by (younger) age and normative and strategic considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how individual-level partisanship and state-level factors affect perceptions of electoral integrity in the United States. We find that evaluations of the integrity of the 2020 US presidential election national outcome were only modestly conditioned by the quality of election administration in a person's state. Perceptions of electoral legitimacy were much more substantially conditioned by motivated reasoning associated with a person's partisanship, the partisan context Republicans resided in, and Republican partisans' residence in a swing-state where final results from 2020 were delayed due to late-counted ballots. Overall, estimated effects of the quality of election administration on confidence in elections are null or modest. Partisan factors associated with Donald Trump's "Big Lie" about the 2020 US presidential election were the strongest forces predicting lack of confidence in US elections and perceptions that election officials were altering results. These factors were not evident in 2016. We discuss how these findings may reflect a fundamental alteration of attitudes among Republican voters and elites about the legitimacy of democratic elections in the US, rather than reflecting cyclical variation in partisan confidence associated with which party won the past election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conducts a review and appraisal of discourse surrounding tribalism, which is deeply entrenched in Nigerian politics at different levels of government as the polity of the country has often experienced significant tension along tribal/ethnic lines. Using digital media data, with specific focus on discourses produced during the 2023 general elections in the country, this study reviews and analyses the discourse of tribalism in Nigerian political communication. In an election heavily contested by the All Progressives Congress (APC), the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and the Labour Party (LP), with candidates representing three major ethnic groups in Nigeria involving Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo respectively, the entrenched nature of the tribalism mindset in the country was fully exposed. Although tribalism in Nigerian politics has been in existence for a long time, it was only recently witnessed on a large scale on social media given that it is the first time that three popular presidential candidates have emerged from the country’s three most popular ethnic groups. Through a multimodal discourse analysis, the study reveals instances of tribalist discourse in the country vis-à-vis the social context and implications for the democracy, national cohesion, and the development of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides causal estimates of the effects of increases in the size of candidate lists on the political careers of newcomers to the political arena. We explore an exogenous discontinuity in district magnitude that allows parties to expand their candidate lists in the Brazilian open-list local elections and find that the additional candidacies are allocated to weaker candidates, mainly newcomers, who end up occupying a significant share of the additional seats. We also find that the electoral experience provided by the additional candidacies increases the number of newcomers elected in their second attempt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing an institutionalist approach, this paper traces the historical transitions of formal-informal interactions in the Egyptian political system before and after the 2011 Revolution. I argue that formal-informal interactions moved from Complementary during the first two decades of Mubarak's rule, to Competing in his last decade, then back to Complementary under Sisi. Each transition was motivated by a critical juncture. The first transition was driven by Mubarak's desire to bequeath power to his son, Gamal, while the second was motivated by the collapse of his regime in 2011. Each transition was marked by differing means. Mubarak used electoral politics to manage formal-informal relations, while the current regime under Sisi is heavily reliant on coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to make two independently operated terahertz wireless LANs quickly complete coordinated convergence and improve the performance of the converged network, this paper proposed an efficient and fast convergence of MAC protocols（EFC-MAC）. Firstly, in view of the imperfection of the existing bridge node election mechanism and the shortcomings of the network coordination and convergence mechanism, this paper proposed a mechanism to start the election of bridge nodes when the first network node applied for network access, and announced the election results in the BP period of the next superframe, and other mechanism to decide whether to apply for CTA to forward heartbeat messages according to whether the network had completed coordinated convergence. So that the network could complete convergence efficiently and quickly. Then, aiming at the problem that the application method of public time slots by network nodes are not flexible enough, this paper proposed a me-chanism to dynamically apply for CTA according to the amount of time slot remaining in P-CTAP, which improved the performance of the network. Finally, aiming at the problem that the bridge node switching mechanism is not clear, this paper proposed a mechanism to complete the bridge node switching by using a CAP period length. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol can effectively improve network throughput, improve slot utilization and reduce data transmission delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive research has focused on political movements against regional integration and globalisation to understand the causes and consequences of their political success in developed democracies. However, studies on the effectiveness of large-scale institutional efforts to hinder this political development have been limited. My paper investigates the electoral effects of one of the largest investment subsidy programs in the world, the European regional investment policy. Even though it distributes billions of Euros each year to foster economic and social cohesion, it is unclear whether these fiscal transfers produce any tangible electoral effects. I argue that, in this case, supranational institutions have been successful in taking credit, making heavily targeted regions infertile grounds for the electoral success of eurosceptic parties. Leveraging the NUTS-level election dataset (EU-NED) and regression discontinuity models, this paper is the first to investigate the causal link between investment subsidies for less developed regions and electoral support for eurosceptic parties in national and European elections. The analysis shows that high fiscal transfers to less developed regions cause lower levels of Eurosceptic voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature has found that photographs of politicians can influence electoral preferences. In this article we assess whether candidates rating higher on electoral attractiveness perform better in a series of hypothetical elections, and whether their advantage is magnified when their appearance is printed not only on campaign materials but also on ballot papers. We find that candidate appearance only had a significant impact on vote choice when photographs were printed on ballot papers, and even then there was an impact on only some of the elections, notably those pitting male against female candidates. Photographs had most impact on the choices of those least interested in politics and least likely to vote, and magnified a tendency (among voters of all ages) to favour younger candidates and to penalise older candidates. Findings suggest that the addition of photographs to ballot papers could affect the outcomes of marginal British constituency races. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]