By Romain Lachat (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) What is the story? Under proportional representation (PR), the number of representatives elected may be very different from districts to districts. Portugal, for example, has very small districts where only 2 representatives are elected, and others that are much larger, such as Lisbon where 48 representatives are elected (for […]
By André Blais (University of Montreal) What is the story? In a recent article, we examined how electoral rules influence correct voting in lab elections. We defined a correct vote as a vote that maximizes a subject’s payoff. We found that correct voting is more frequent under plurality than under proportional representation (PR). The lab […]
On April 8 and 9, the Making Electoral Democracy Work project will organize a two-day conference on the state of democracy in Quebec and Canada. The goal is to gather professors, politicians, and specialists from various associations of the civil society and from the media to discuss about this issue. It will be held at […]
By Patrik Ohberg (University of Gothenburg) and Annika Fredén (Lund University) What is the story? Sweden has lived an unprecedented political turmoil these last months. In a preceding blog post, we pointed out that the rather unique Swedish political culture of compromise was threatened by the success of the populist anti-immigration Sweden Democratic Party. The […]
By Marc Guinjoan, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona What is the story? In real-life elections, it is not uncommon for some parties to compete even if they have no chance of winning or gaining parliamentary seats. According to most theories of party competition, the existence of a cost of entry (i.e., the cost of running a […]
By Marc Guinjoan, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona What is the story? In real-life elections, it is not uncommon for some parties to compete even if they have no chance of winning or even of gaining parliamentary seats. According to most theories of party competition, the existence of a cost of entry (i.e., the cost of […]
By Gabrielle Bardall, University of Montreal What is the story? Single-member district (SMD) electoral systems have a bad reputation as far as women’s political representation is concerned. In comparison to proportional representation-based systems (PR), they have been widely considered to disfavour the election of women for a plethora of reasons. In particular, the single most […]
By Annika Fredén (Lund University) Elina Lindgren (University of Gothenburg) Patrik Öhberg (University of Gothenburg) What is the story? On December 3, two months after the national election, the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven called a snap election. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in a country that is considered by many as a political stability […]
By Valérie-Anne Mahéo, McGill University What is the story? In Canada, as in other industrialized democracies, low and declining turnout rates among youth have become a central democratic problem. This problem is especially acute among disadvantaged and less educated youth, who are less likely to vote than the rest of the population. In this blog […]
By Annika Fredén, Lund University What is the story? In this blog, we often talk about strategic voting. As a reminder, we define strategic voting as voting for a party that is not one’s preferred party in a willingness to affect the electoral outcome. Typically, strategic voting concerns voters who prefer a party that has […]
