The Impact of Issue Voting on a Local Nonpartisan Election

Process and Politics Surrounding the Redevelopment of a Municipal Parking Deck Site in Houghton, Michigan

“…Olson’s (1965) seminal work The Logic of Collective Action presents the paradoxical result that small interest groups are more effective politically than large interest groups. An Arkansas tree controversy (Taylor & Schreckhise, 2003) can be viewed through Olson’s lens. A citizens group numbering a few hundred, opposed to a development project involving the removal of old growth trees, organized and successfully defeated the mayor in the subsequent two-candidate election with a total of 12,094 votes cast.…”

Voting “Ford” or Against: Understanding Strategic Voting in the 2014 Toronto Municipal Election

“…A major goal and a novel contribution of this article is to operationalize the strategic dilemma in a “nonpartisan” (at least as far as the ballot is concerned) environment and estimate rates of strategic voting in the 2014 Toronto municipal election. While nonpartisan ballot municipal elections have a developed literature associated with them (Adrian, ; Gilbert, ; Hagensick, ; Pomper, ; Conway, ; Welch and Bledsoe, ; Raymond, ; Schaffner, Streb, and Wright, , ; Taylor and Schreckhise, ; Rock and Baum, ), a good portion of it addresses the “usual suspects” in voting behavior, including models of vote choice and discussion of how partisanship may nonetheless have an influence on the electoral outcome. Direct treatment of strategic behavior in these elections is a notable lacuna in the academic literature, though at least in the case of the 2014 Toronto election, the mainstream media devoted plenty of space to the topic.…”

“…In this article, we investigate the prevalence and correlates of strategic voting in a nonpartisan municipal election using data from the 2014 Toronto Election Study (TES), collected through the hitherto uncommon (Taylor and Schreckhise, ) practice of surveying municipal voters directly. We base our expectations on what is known about strategic behavior in partisan contests and what we know about municipal elections of the nonpartisan variety.…”