IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v110y2016i03p559-578_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Primary Effect: Preference Votes and Political Promotions

Author

Listed:
  • FOLKE, OLLE
  • PERSSON, TORSTEN
  • RICKNE, JOHANNA

Abstract

In this analysis of how electoral rules and outcomes shape the internal organization of political parties, we make an analogy to primary elections to argue that parties use preference-vote tallies to identify popular politicians and promote them to positions of power. We document this behavior among parties in Sweden's semi-open-list system and in Brazil's open-list system. To identify a causal impact of preference votes, we exploit a regression discontinuity design around the threshold of winning the most preference votes on a party list. In our main case, Sweden, these narrow “primary winners†are at least 50% more likely to become local party leaders than their runners-up. Across individual politicians, the primary effect is present only for politicians who hold the first few positions on the list and when the preference-vote winner and runner-up have similar competence levels. Across party groups, the primary effect is the strongest in unthreatened governing parties.

Suggested Citation

  • Folke, Olle & Persson, Torsten & Rickne, Johanna, 2016. "The Primary Effect: Preference Votes and Political Promotions," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 110(3), pages 559-578, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:110:y:2016:i:03:p:559-578_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055416000241/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:110:y:2016:i:03:p:559-578_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.