Two strategies for building a personal vote: Personalized representation in the UK and Denmark

Pedersen, Helene Helboe; vanHeerde‐Hudson, Jennifer

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2019.02.010

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…An alternative observational approach linking MP-productivity to vote share would struggle to account for many sources of confounding-such as MP-specific characteristics or factors specific to the local context-which influence MPs' legislative activities or their publicising of these activities during campaigns (Mayhew, 1974;Pedersen & VanHeerde-Hudson, 2019). We task voters with comparing two incumbent MPs and providing ratings of the MPs' electability and job performance.…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working Hard or Hardly Working? Gender and Voter Evaluations of Legislator Productivity

Hargrave

Smith

2023

Polit Behav

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Do women have to work harder in office to be evaluated the same as men? When running for office, studies show that women are, on average, more qualified than men candidates. Once in office, women outperform their men colleagues in sponsoring legislation, securing funding, and in their constituency responsiveness. However, we do not know whether women need to outperform men in their political roles to receive equivalent evaluations. We report on a novel conjoint experiment where we present British voters with paired profiles describing Members of Parliament at the end of their first parliamentary term. Through manipulating the legislative outputs, gender, and party of MPs, we find that voters overall prefer politicians who are productive to politicians who are unproductive, and reward productive politicians in job performance and electability evaluations. However, we find no evidence that productive women are unjustly rewarded, nor do unproductive women face greater punishment than men. Our results suggest that, at least for productivity as measured in parliamentary-based activities, women politicians do not need to work harder than their men colleagues to satisfy voters.

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Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working Hard or Hardly Working? Gender and Voter Evaluations of Legislator Productivity

Hargrave

Smith

2023

Polit Behav

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“…Politicians strive to realize multiple goals, but reelection is the most fundamental motive necessary for realizing any other goal as a politician (Mayhew, 1974). Therefore, when MPs are insecure about their re-election, they are likely to care mostly about winning votes, and as a result, they are more likely to use the opportunities of strengthening a personal electoral platform on social media (Adler et al, 1998;Pedersen & vanHeerde-Hudson, 2019). The impact of electoral marginality is, however, contested (Gulati 2004), which relates to the tension between party and voter control of re-election (Gallagher & Marsch, 1988).…”

Section: H1: Measures Based On Social Media Activity Overestimate Per...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Party soldiers on personal platforms? Politicians’ personalized use of social media

Pedersen

2022

Party Politics

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Social media are seen as a catalyst for personalized politics, and social media activity has, therefore, been used as an indicator of personalized representation. However, this may lead to an overestimation because politicians can behave as party soldiers even on their personal social media platforms. This article proposes that we need to examine the content of politicians’ social media communication to evaluate levels of personalized representation and understand the drivers behind it. Based on a full year’s Facebook activity of Danish members of Parliament including 28,000 updates, this study documents two main results. First, politicians do use Facebook to manage their personal image, but they also attend to their party duties. Attending to content suggests that activity measures overestimate personalized representation by at least 20 percentage points. Second, in contrast to expectations, mainly electorally secure politicians personalize communication on social media, which suggests that vote getters may enjoy more party duty leeway.

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“…

V_{party}

is the total list votes including all votes cast for individual candidates and the list. Based on other analyses (Pedersen and vanHeerde‐Hudson 2019), I defined a safe seat as a seat with a marginality of 5 percentage points or more. Even though the two measures of safe seat are not fully equivalent, perceptions of electoral safety may influence politicians, making them less responsive towards constituency interest when they try to make their position within the parliamentary party group (Kellermann 2016; Arter 2018).…”

Section: Recruitment: the Educational Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, the results provide insights into a Danish tension between district and party representation. Despite electoral institutional incentives, Danish politicians only give district representation low priority (Skjæveland & Christiansen 2018; Pedersen & vanHeerde‐Hudson 2019). Moreover, the number of electoral districts was halved (17 to 10 districts) with the reform in 2007 decreasing the ‘localness’ of candidates presented to the constituency voters in national elections.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mismatched Preferences for Responsiveness: Danish Voters and Politicians

Pedersen

2020

Scand Pol Stud

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Responsiveness is key in democratic systems and can be perceived as a continuous interaction between voters and politicians. However, only limited research has studied the alignment or potential mismatch between voter and politician preferences regarding responsiveness. This article examines how voters' and politicians' preferences for responsiveness differ and suggests reasons for the identified differences. It proposes two factors leading to different preferences: recruitment of highly educated politicians and party-organised elite politics. Using survey data collected among Danish voters, candidates and MPs, the article documents a mismatch between politicians' and voters' preferences for responsiveness: politicians prefer party responsiveness, while voters prefer constituency responsiveness. In line with expectations, voters with a shorter education have stronger preferences for constituency responsiveness, while incumbent MPs are even more party-oriented than challenger candidates. These findings highlight potential troublesome consequences of the increasingly educational-elitist recruitment and continued party organisation of legislative politics for the representative relationship between voters and politicians.

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Two strategies for building a personal vote: Personalized representation in the UK and Denmark

Cited by 13 publications

References 48 publications

Working Hard or Hardly Working? Gender and Voter Evaluations of Legislator Productivity

Working Hard or Hardly Working? Gender and Voter Evaluations of Legislator Productivity

Party soldiers on personal platforms? Politicians’ personalized use of social media

Mismatched Preferences for Responsiveness: Danish Voters and Politicians

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