Special Elections: A Comparative Perspective

There have been many comparative studies of British and American parties and elections, but little attention has been paid to comparisons of special elections (or by-elections) to fill vacancies in the two lower houses of the central legislatures, the House of Commons and the House of Representatives. Although British by-elections have been closely studied for a long time, even the most basic facts about American special elections were unknown until recently. Despite the lack of direct examination of how by-elections compare in the two countries, American academics have often dismissed American special elections with such passing comments as ‘because of their unsystematic nature and unsynchronized timing, American special elections, unlike British by-elections, have negligible predictive value’.