We demonstrate that the availability of easily applied heuristics conditions the effect of candidates' ideological positioning on intra-party success in Finnish parliamentary elections, using data from three Finnish elections (2011-2019). The effect of ideological distance matters most when the share of recognizable candidates with typical PVEAs on the list is limited. The results suggest that voters use ideological cues as the base for their voting decisions.
We compare Finnish parliamentary candidates’ pre-election responses to public VAAs with those provided in a post-election confidential survey in the Finnish 2019 parliamentary elections. Our findings provide solid evidence of very similar responses by candidates in the two settings. There are hence good reasons to consider the information provided by candidates in public VAAs as sincere.
This article suggests a design intervention to the current state of Finnish VAAs. The article was built on previous research on Finnish VAA designs conducted by Isotalo (2020). In addition to providing new VAA designs, this article’s contribution was in exploring the VAA design process, pointing out important design choices for VAA developers, and setting design objectives that address problems with existing Finnish VAA designs. The proposed VAA designs were developed by utilizing the design science research (DSR) approach.
We find that estimating party positions with computational methods (wordscores and wordfish) for Finnish parties 2003-2019 prove to be insufficient in comparison to traditional methods such as expert surveys, the Manifesto Project and voter estimates.
We find that ideological positions of candidates matter for their electoral success in Finnish parliamentary elections, using data from three Finnish elections (2011-2019). The effect of ideological distance is large enough to be a decisive factor in intra-party competition between the last candidate that was elected and the first one that was not.
The paper shows that the effect of geographic remoteness depends on local party strength and the degree of urbanization. Moreover, empirical results confirm that nearby located localized co-partisans decrease a candidate’s own vote share. These findings have important implications for politicians’ careers, party nomination strategies and future empirical research on intra-party competition.
Sosiaalisen median aineistoja on pyritty hyödyntämään ennustemalleissa esimerkiksi vaalitulosten, työttömyysasteen, osakekurssien tai kuluttajatuotteiden kysynnän ennakoinnissa. Laajempia kulutusilmiöitä on kuitenkin harvemmin pyritty ennustamaan …