Having it both ways? Balancing personal and party representation

Michael MarshDepartment of Political Science

Trinity College Dublin

Presented Are PSAI Conference: Our Institutions Fit for Purpose? Political Reform in the Republic of IrelandTCD 22 June 2009

Objectives of PR-STV

• Provides a strong link between a particular representative and the voter and also allows voters to rank candidates according to any criterion, or collection of criteria they wish

• This still allows for a degree of proportional representation of parties BUT ability to do so constrained by the extent that party is important to voters

But what is the nature of the link between voters and parties?

Proportional representation of parties

• When party structures preferences: ie people give high preference votes to party of first pref candidate

• OR

• When bigger parties[on first pref count] get most of the preferences on later counts

Extent of party voting in Ireland

Irish national election study 2002

Who gets lower party preferences

Irish national election study 2002

Voters and their TDs

• Mean rating on a 0-100 thermometer scale of first preference candidate is 79 in 2002

ALSO• 69% of voters in 2002 and 71% in 2007 report

speaking to their first choice candidate• 32% contacted public rep in years 1997-2002• Half of the electorate was contacted by a

candidate in 2002 and in 2007

Voting for person or party

• Only 20% mentioned ‘party’ in answer to an open ended question in 2002

• People rate their first pref candidate higher than they rate that candidate’s party: 79>76

• In closed ended questions, more people say they vote for the candidate than say they vote for the party

• And many say they would follow candidate to a different party

Party or candidate in 2007

 

Would follow candidate to another party

Most important for vote: Yes No Depends Total

Party 4 32 4 40Candidate 36 17 7 60

Total 40 49 11 100

Irish national election study 2007

What motivates candidate support?

Bars indicate coefficient for factors in multivariate OLS regression.All variables range between 0 and 10. R2=.0.34. Party coefficients not shown.

Important that a TD…

Irish national election study 2007

TDs should represent

% ranking each as the most important: Irish national election study 2007

TD serving local concerns is a strength of the system?

Q: The assumption that TDs should provide a local service is a strength of the Irish political system. Irish national election study 2007

When best party and best candidate differ …

Best party and

candidate

Best candidate

onlyBest party

only Neither79 22 14 1

Only 14% of all voters vote for party of best candidate only

‘Best’ calculated from thermometer scores for each party and candidate: Based on Irish national election study 2002

Policy representation via parties?• Do voters have different policy preferences? • Yes• Do voters for different parties have different

preferences: • not much• Do voters see parties as offering different policy

stances: • even less• Is there any correspondence between voter and party

policy?: • not really

Do voters have different policy preferences?

Do voters have different policy preferences?

•Do voters for different parties have different preferences?•Do voters see parties as offering different policy stances?•Is there any correspondence between voter and party policy?

Summary

• Voters have a choice of party as well as person

• Many seem to take that, and for a majority, or at least significant minority, the candidate seems to matter more than the party

• Voters want candidates to represent local area, for essentially extractive purposes, to get private rather than public goods

Where does that leave parties?

• Parties probably much more important than this suggests, since few voters clearly pick candidate over party, although party evaluations may derive from popular candidates

• However, parties seem to be empty containers with respect to policy

• While there is a recognition of left and right, these concepts have no clear policy implications

• On classic left right issues, economic and social, little correspondence between parties and voters

Conclusion

• Perhaps in Ireland, balancing party and personal representation has a cost; policy representation is unclear

• There may be other aspects of policy, such as valence – who will do the best job at pursuing the widely agreed polices – which do link voters to parties

• Yet that implies more agreement on policies than we see in many instances

• In general then the creation of party representation on through personal representation is achieved with only limited success