Do party leadership contests forecast British general elections?

Murr, Andreas

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102342

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Using results of MP voting in internal leadership elections as an indicator of leadership quality, Murr (2021) shows that 11 out of 14 elections since 1966 were won by the party with the leader that had the biggest margin of victory among their own MPs. That strong association raises questions as to whether leadership quality can account for the pattern of association between economic crises and election outcomes.…”

Section: Economic Crisis Since the Last Electionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why majoritarian governments win and lose: UK elections since 1922

Fisher

2023

Preprint

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Why are some governments re-elected while others are kicked out by the electorate? This paper argues that majoritarian institutions ordinarily give UK governments enough power to have a high probability of re-election. However, governments tend to lose after economic crises, including recessions and currency devaluations, as the public use elections to hold governments to account. That pattern accounts for the outcomes of 19 of the 27 UK general elections since 1922. A further three elections can be accounted for by governments averting electoral disaster by changing prime minister after a crisis. The causal effects of crises and changes in prime minister are supported by both cross-election and election-by-election analysis. Economic crises and changes of prime minister together explain 22 of the 27 election outcomes, including all the elections since 1987.

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Section: Economic Crisis Since the Last Electionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why majoritarian governments win and lose: UK elections since 1922

Fisher

2023

Preprint

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“…A quantitative literature collates MPs' preferences in individual contests to uncover factional patterns (Booth et al, 2023;Cowley and Bailey, 2000;Cowley and Garry, 1998;Crines et al, 2018;Jeffery et al, 2018Jeffery et al, , 2022Jeffery et al, , 2023Heppell et al, , 2022Heppell and Crines, 2011;Heppell and Hill, 2008, 2009Roe-Crines et al, 2021). Leadership selection has also been linked to related political questions, such as cabinet reshuffles (Allen, 2023) and general-election forecasting (Murr, 2015(Murr, , 2021.…”

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confidence: 99%

Parliamentarians versus party members? Leadership selection systems in the British Conservative and Labour parties

Quinn

2023

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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British parties have pioneered the use of ‘one-member, one-vote’ ballots to select their leaders. However, the elections of Jeremy Corbyn (Labour) and Liz Truss (Conservative) prompted calls to return leadership selection to parliamentarians. Critics claim that party members are non-centrist and liable to impose unsuitable leaders on MPs. This weakens the cohesion of parliamentary parties, undermining the functioning of Britain’s majoritarian democracy. This article assesses the major parties’ leader-selection systems. It goes beyond existing research by identifying and applying four evaluative criteria for selection institutions: legitimacy, parliamentary acceptability, leader-eviction and timeliness. It shows that most criticisms of one-member, one-vote are overstated because the latter is heavily mediated by ex-ante and/or ex-post parliamentary controls, for example, nomination thresholds and confidence votes. One-member, one-vote generally produces leaders acceptable to MPs; ‘unsuitable’ ones typically arise when the parliamentary controls fail. However, key institutional weaknesses are identified: legitimacy in the Conservatives’ system and leader-eviction in Labour’s.

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