1. Having it both ways? Balancing personal and party representation
Michael Marsh
Department of Political Science
Trinity College Dublin
Presented Are PSAI Conference: Our Institutions Fit for Purpose? Political Reform in the Republic of Ireland
TCD 22 June 2009

2. Objectives of PR-STV
Provides a strong link between a particular representative and the voter and also allows voters to rank candidates according to any criterion, or collection of criteria they wish
This still allows for a degree of proportional representation of parties BUT ability to do so constrained by the extent that party is important to voters
But what is the nature of the link between voters and parties?

3. Proportional representation of parties
When party structures preferences: ie people give high preference votes to party of first pref candidate OR
When bigger parties[on first pref count] get most of the preferences on later counts

4. Extent of party voting in Ireland
Irish national election study 2002

5. Who gets lower party preferences
Irish national election study 2002

6. Voters and their TDs
Mean rating on a thermometer scale of first preference candidate is 79 in 2002
ALSO
69% of voters in and 71% in 2007 report speaking to their first choice candidate
32% contacted public rep in years
Half of the electorate was contacted by a candidate in 2002 and in 2007

7. Voting for person or party
Only 20% mentioned ‘party’ in answer to an open ended question in 2002
People rate their first pref candidate higher than they rate that candidate’s party: 79>76
In closed ended questions, more people say they vote for the candidate than say they vote for the party
And many say they would follow candidate to a different party

8. Would follow candidate
Party or candidate in 2007
Would follow candidate
to another party
Most important for vote:
Yes No
Depends
Total
Party 4 32 40
Candidate 36 17 7 60 49 11
100
37 and 25 in 2002
Irish national election study 2007

9. What motivates candidate support?
Bars indicate coefficient for factors in multivariate OLS regression.
All variables range between 0 and 10. R2= Party coefficients not shown.

10. Important that a TD…
Irish national election study 2007

11. TDs should represent % ranking each as the most important:
Irish national election study 2007

12. TD serving local concerns is a strength of the system?
Q: The assumption that TDs should provide a local service
is a strength of the Irish political system. Irish national election study 2007

13. When best party and best candidate differ …
only
Best party
Neither 79 22 14 1
Only 14% of all voters vote for party of best candidate only
‘Best’ calculated from thermometer scores for each party and candidate:
Based on Irish national election study 2002

14. Policy representation via parties?
Do voters have different policy preferences?
Yes
Do voters for different parties have different preferences:
not much
Do voters see parties as offering different policy stances:
even less
Is there any correspondence between voter and party policy?:
not really

15. Do voters have different policy preferences?

16. Do voters have different policy preferences?

17. Do voters for different parties have different preferences?
Do voters see parties as offering different policy stances?
Is there any correspondence between voter and party policy?

25. Summary Voters have a choice of party as well as person
Many seem to take that, and for a majority, or at least significant minority, the candidate seems to matter more than the party
Voters want candidates to represent local area, for essentially extractive purposes, to get private rather than public goods

26. Where does that leave parties?
Parties probably much more important than this suggests, since few voters clearly pick candidate over party, although party evaluations may derive from popular candidates
However, parties seem to be empty containers with respect to policy
While there is a recognition of left and right, these concepts have no clear policy implications
On classic left right issues, economic and social, little correspondence between parties and voters

27. Conclusion
Perhaps in Ireland, balancing party and personal representation has a cost; policy representation is unclear
There may be other aspects of policy, such as valence – who will do the best job at pursuing the widely agreed polices – which do link voters to parties
Yet that implies more agreement on policies than we see in many instances
In general then the creation of party representation on through personal representation is achieved with only limited success