Regional Map of Electoral Cleavages At 2011 State Duma Elections

Consultation Response: Electoral Pilots at the C.E.P. and Local Elections

The Government recently announced it was preparing for a further stage of electoral reform pilots, to be held in 2004 at the scheduled European and local authority elections. The intention is to combine these two elections, and conduct all postal voting pilots in three European regions and a further e-voting pilot in one of those chosen regions. The pilots are a significant change from those co...

Electoral College Alternatives and US Presidential Elections

The President of the United States is chosen directly by the Electoral College, although indirectly the citizens select the President. Different states currently employ two systems of electoral-vote allocation under the Electoral College framework: the widely adopted winner-take-all system and the system adopted by Maine and Nebraska. The properties of these two systems are analyzed against the...

Interest in Elections and Electoral Participation

The author stresses that participation has an intrinsic value for the citizens. In addition, it is also important as a means of civic education, a process in which citizens learn civic values. A comparison of electoral participation in democratic polities shows great differences among them. The author argues that the level of voter turnout depends on a number of factors, such as the features of...

Do Cleavages Explain Electoral Responses to Economic Crisis in Europe?

Social cleavages, electoral reform and party choice: Israel’s ‘natural’ experiment

This paper examines party preferences in Israel from 1993 to 1999. This period provides a unique ‘natural’ experiment in that the middle was marked by a change from a single-ballot party list to a two-ballot system that included direct election of the Prime Minister. The paper has two goals: (1) to explore the patterns of social cleavage voting in Israel during this period; and (2) to determine...