Crashing the party. Does STV help independents?

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TY  - JOUR
  - Weeks, L
  - 2014
  - July
  - Party Politics
  - Crashing the party. Does STV help independents?
  - Validated
  - Altmetric: 1 ()
  - single transferable vote independents Ireland Australia MINOR PARTIES POLITICS CANDIDATES 3RD-PARTY IRELAND SYSTEM PEROT VOTE
  - 20
  - 604
  - 616
  - Parties tend to be wary of candidate-centred electoral systems, which is one factor why the use of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) is limited to a few cases. One source of this wariness is that STV is thought to favour non-party candidates, or independents, a claim based primarily on the experience of Ireland. The relative absence of independents in Australia and Malta, the other two countries using STV for national elections, challenges the merits of this reasoning. This study re-examines the nature of this causal link using constituency-level data from the Irish and Australian cases. The results indicate that there is not a great deal of evidence to support the hypothesis that STV favours independents, in particular because electoral system detail can affect a system's ability to realize expected consequences. While constituency size, ballot access and ballot design affect support for independents, it is not always in the expected manner. This suggests that the non-party phenomenon is more than just a by-product of electoral system effects.
  - 10.1177/1354068811436063
DA  - 2014/07
ER  - 
@article{V271354413,
   = {Weeks,  L },
   = {2014},
   = {July},
   = {Party Politics},
   = {Crashing the party. Does STV help independents?},
   = {Validated},
   = {Altmetric: 1 ()},
   = {single transferable vote independents Ireland Australia MINOR PARTIES POLITICS CANDIDATES 3RD-PARTY IRELAND SYSTEM PEROT VOTE},
   = {20},
  pages = {604--616},
   = {{Parties tend to be wary of candidate-centred electoral systems, which is one factor why the use of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) is limited to a few cases. One source of this wariness is that STV is thought to favour non-party candidates, or independents, a claim based primarily on the experience of Ireland. The relative absence of independents in Australia and Malta, the other two countries using STV for national elections, challenges the merits of this reasoning. This study re-examines the nature of this causal link using constituency-level data from the Irish and Australian cases. The results indicate that there is not a great deal of evidence to support the hypothesis that STV favours independents, in particular because electoral system detail can affect a system's ability to realize expected consequences. While constituency size, ballot access and ballot design affect support for independents, it is not always in the expected manner. This suggests that the non-party phenomenon is more than just a by-product of electoral system effects.}},
   = {10.1177/1354068811436063},
  source = {IRIS}
}
AUTHORSWeeks, L
YEAR2014
MONTHJuly
JOURNAL_CODEParty Politics
TITLECrashing the party. Does STV help independents?
STATUSValidated
TIMES_CITEDAltmetric: 1 ()
SEARCH_KEYWORDsingle transferable vote independents Ireland Australia MINOR PARTIES POLITICS CANDIDATES 3RD-PARTY IRELAND SYSTEM PEROT VOTE
VOLUME20
ISSUE
START_PAGE604
END_PAGE616
ABSTRACTParties tend to be wary of candidate-centred electoral systems, which is one factor why the use of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) is limited to a few cases. One source of this wariness is that STV is thought to favour non-party candidates, or independents, a claim based primarily on the experience of Ireland. The relative absence of independents in Australia and Malta, the other two countries using STV for national elections, challenges the merits of this reasoning. This study re-examines the nature of this causal link using constituency-level data from the Irish and Australian cases. The results indicate that there is not a great deal of evidence to support the hypothesis that STV favours independents, in particular because electoral system detail can affect a system's ability to realize expected consequences. While constituency size, ballot access and ballot design affect support for independents, it is not always in the expected manner. This suggests that the non-party phenomenon is more than just a by-product of electoral system effects.
PUBLISHER_LOCATION
ISBN_ISSN
EDITION
URL
DOI_LINK10.1177/1354068811436063
FUNDING_BODY
GRANT_DETAILS