Micro-targeting, or data-driven fieldwork, was pioneered by Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and has now spread to Australia. Stephen Mills explains how activists in different parties and pressure groups used it to target voters in the 2016 elections. Volunteers’ enthusiasm for this form of campaigning marks a turning point in Australian politics.

Democrats work their way through lists of target voters in California, November 2012. Photo: Obama for America California via a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence

Data-driven fieldwork is rapidly emerging as a significant form of election campaigning in Australia. The recent double dissolution campaign set a new high water mark, with no fewer than six separate fieldwork campaigns conducted by political parties, independent candidates and third-party organisations. What did they do? And did it have any effect?

As part of a wider study of fieldwork campaigning in Australian elections, this post pulls together the claims made by the various campaign organisations about their fieldwork efforts. (The data comes from a variety of scattered sources, and there are still a few gaps, so additions and corrections are welcome.)

In ‘data-driven fieldwork’ – also called Obama-style micro-targeting – the older traditions of grassroots community organising and personal narrative are combined with still-emerging applications of digital information and communications technologies, in order to achieve ever more efficient targeting of messages at persuadable voters.

It is both capital- and labour-intensive. So to understand what is going on, we need to evaluate the performance of the campaign technology and of the campaign people. The first of these is reasonably straightforward. For example, the social media campaigns by the ALP, Liberals and Greens in the 2016 campaign have been measured by US consulting firm Dynatrace and published in a handy infographic.

But measuring the work of campaign staff, volunteers, and candidates, is inherently more problematic: we are reliant on what the campaign organisations choose to reveal about their performance. On the other hand, one of the distinctive features of data-driven fieldwork is its use of – you could even say, its obsessive compulsion about – performance metrics.

The inspiration: Obama for America

David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager in 2008, was notorious for his enthusiasm for spread sheets and love of performance metrics. According to journalist Sasha Issenberg, he would want to know ‘how many of a field officer’s volunteer shifts had been filled last weekend? How much money did that fundraising blast bring in?’

Likewise, in the analysis of the Obama for America organisation by Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie Han, ‘metrics defined and assessed how well everyone—from the most senior staff to the most junior volunteers—were meeting their responsibilities.’

“Throughout the campaign, Chicago headquarters established voter contact goals for each state, region, neighbourhood team, and volunteer shift—and held staff and volunteers at each level strictly accountable to those numbers. … (T)he campaign used metrics to communicate and implement its strategy, to provide clarity to each team about what its role was, and to ensure that all local activity added up to a larger shared purpose.”    Groundbreakers p153

How Australia’s Labor Party and the Greens adopted it

Showing that this love of performance measurement has carried over into Australia, the 2016 campaign produced an abundance of data, or at least data claims, about the performance of the rival fieldwork efforts.

Let’s look first at the Labor Party, which over the last five years has invested more time and effort than any other Australian party in building and testing its fieldwork capacity at federal and state elections.

Two weeks into the eight-week campaign, Labor’s director of target seats, Paul Erikson, emailed supporters to claim Labor already had more than 5000 volunteers in the field. They had knocked on more than 80,000 doors and made more than 140,000 phone calls to voters. These numbers suggest the ALP had been recruiting and training its volunteers, equipping them with scripts and placing them in relevant locations, over a long pre-campaign period.

Erikson’s email was promoting the target announced at that time by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s for Labor’s fieldwork campaign. Shorten wanted ‘one million conversations with Australians by election day’ – an impressive but not overly ambitious target. Labor in 2013 had reported making 1.2 million phone calls and 250,000 doorknocks (Professionals p245). By early June Erikson reported ‘conversations’ had numbered 500,000 and by the end of the 2016 campaign, Labor had easily reached the target.

At the first caucus meeting of the new parliament Shorten reported to Labor MPs that 162,000 volunteers had worked on the campaign at different times, “knocking on over half a million doors and making more than 1.6 million phone calls.” (Shorten’s July 8 speech is still accessible on his Facebook page.) Slightly different metrics was reported by Katherine Murphy in the Guardian: just 15,000 volunteers, who knocked on 560,000 doors, made a million phone calls, and ‘logged 450,000 successful conversations in targeted seats’.

On fundraising, ALP national secretary George Wright emailed supporters on 29 June that Labor had hit its target of $1m in ‘grassroots online donations.’ Over 13,000 individual donors had made an average donation of $48.  This compared to around $800,000 raised this way in 2013.

The Australian Greens, the other political party to mount a data-driven fieldwork campaign, described 2016 as the biggest campaign they had ever run. I have not been able to trace published fieldwork metrics that would flesh out that statement. A flavour is provided by the post-election survey of volunteers conducted by the Western Australian Greens, which estimated 25,000 “volunteer hours” were donated in fieldwork tasks such as doorknocking, telephone calling and data entry.  The NSW Greens hired a ‘data organiser and trainer’ before the campaign, and a ‘field campaigner’ during the campaign to manage volunteers and organise phone banking.

Of the third-party campaigners, the trade union movement again mounted a significant fieldwork effort – separate from, though parallel to, the Labor’s Party’s campaign.  In early June, with another month of the campaign still to run, ACTU secretary Dave Oliver claimed 20,000 volunteers and 750,000 phone calls

By the end of the campaign, the ACTU reported having ‘conversations with 46,102 union members who were swinging voters’, of whom 33,191 were ‘convinced’ to put the Liberals last. In the final 48 hours of the campaign, ACTU volunteers distributed one million replica Medicare cards.

GetUp and independents

Compared to these behemoth numbers, other fieldwork efforts seem skinnier.

In a jubilant post-election You Tube video Paul Oosting, the national director of activist group GetUp, reports 3736 volunteers were mobilised to campaign in twelve seats held by ‘hard right’ Liberal MPs. They donated a total of 17,741 hours work, including 735 volunteers who filled 600 ‘calling shifts’ in ‘community phone banks’.

Together with doorknockers and others, these volunteers conducted 45,000 conversations with voters in target seats, Oosting reported. Of these, 27,000 conversations took place in the seats of Dickson (held by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton) and Bass (held by whip Andrew Nikolic).  GetUp’s engagement director Darren Loasby is quoted claiming 17,000 calls were made in Bass.

On election day, GetUp staffed 450 booths and handed out 1.1 million How to Vote cards. Oosting also said 36,000 GetUp members had ‘chipped in’ to the campaign but did not disclose any dollar amounts.

Finally, two rural independents again mounted their own volunteer fieldwork efforts: Cathy McGowan in the seat of Indi and Tony Windsor in New England. McGowan’s first campaign to wrest Indi from the Liberals in 2013 had been a classic of the style, deploying 700 volunteers through ‘kitchen table conversations’, local community-level team organisation, intensive social media activity, web-based volunteer recruitment and crowdfunding more than $117,000 in small donations.

In seeking re-election she repeated the pattern; her website shows more than 250 volunteers signed up for activities including phonebanking, doorknocking, and fundraising.  McGowan and Windsor – as well as Greens MP Adam Bandt – also used the US digital platform NationBuilder to run their campaign website. NationBuilder allows campaigns to run an integrated database handling volunteer recruitment, doorknocking, fundraising and social media.

‘It’s simple really’

In summary, then, these performance metrics address three sets of campaign activities: How many volunteers were in the field? What did they do? (In particular, how many ‘conversations’ did they have on doorsteps or phone calls, and with whom?) And how much money was raised from supporters?

The repeated emphasis on ‘conversations’ is no accident. All the fieldwork campaigners express their confidence in the efficacy of face-to-face conversations with voters and, in the spirit of Marshall Ganz, their faith in winning an uphill us-versus-them contest:

“We don’t have the money of the old parties, but we do have people power. … We know that conversations are the most powerful way to connect with people and to shift perspectives on the issues that we care about” (Adam Bandt website)

“We may not have the big money that The Nationals have, but we do have a network of dedicated locals who want to see New England independent again. We need volunteers to help with … having conversations with voters about what we can achieve with an Independent New England (Tony Windsor website)

“It’s simple really. Conversations win votes, votes win seats, and we’re just 21 seats short of a government …”  (ALP email, 21 May)

Of course, none of these metrics by themselves prove that this form of campaigning ‘works’, or that it’s more or less effective at winning votes than, say, television advertising or direct mail. The fact that the winners of the 2016 elections, the Liberal and National parties, did not conduct data-driven fieldwork suggests at least that there is no single strategy to electoral victory. Equally, however, the apparently widespread faith in the ability of volunteers to win campaigns marks a potentially significant point in Australian elections and political life.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit. It first appeared at Pop Politics Aus.

Stephen Mills (stephen.mills@sydney.edu.au) is a lecturer in Public Management at the Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney. He was awarded the APSA Henry Mayer Book Prize 2015 for The Professionals: Strategy, Money and the Rise of the Political Campaigner in Australia.

Democracy is in decline – or so a growing consensus suggests. Paul Schuler sets out the evidence for claims that people are turning to autocratic alternatives, and asks whether they necessarily show a loss of faith in democracy. He proposes some alternative measures that could establish whether people are genuinely willing to trade freedom for a ‘solution’ to anxieties about immigration, inequality and globalisation.

Donald Trump at CPAC 2011 in Washington, DC. Photo: Gage Skidmore via a CC-BY-NC SA 2.0 licence

Is global democracy in decline? The amount of scholarly firepower trained on the question suggests it is. The Social Science Research Council has commissioned a series of essays on the “Anxieties of Democracy.” In the last two years the Journal of Democracy has published a series of articles on this very subject, with most agreeing that the threat is real.

Unfortunately, despite evidence from specific elections that seems to justify the concern, current research designs and survey indicators do not seem able to describe or predict the outcomes generating it. What is the evidence for a democratic decline and its drawbacks? And are there alternative measurement strategies?

Evidence for a global decline in democracy comes in three types. The first form of evidence comes from cross-national indicators (typically Freedom House), showing that the number of free countries is either not growing or declining. The second type comes from election outcomes indicating an increase in support for leaders that appear less committed to democratic norms. The third type focuses on individual level survey data, typically from the World Values Survey. Of these three forms of evidence, changes in the cross-national indices seem the weakest. Although there has been some levelling off of Freedom House Scores, the decline does not yet constitute a “reverse wave.” Furthermore, as Levitsky and Way point out, what decline there is may have more to do with overestimating the true levels of democracy in the 1990s than any actual reduction in democracy.[1]

The more compelling evidence for the democratic decline comes from global election returns and the survey data. This evidence implies that while democratic deficit may not yet be reflected in the democracy indicators, the storm clouds are gathering. In terms of electoral returns, the success of parties and leaders advocating nationalist sentiments (some of whom have won) in Europe and the US has raised concerns that these appeals could be used to trample on liberal freedoms, particularly for minorities. The problem extends to Asia, where Prabowo Subianto, a former military official under deposed autocrat Suharto came close to winning the presidency despite (or because of) his appeals to roll back liberal democracy. In the Philippines, popular president Rodrigo Duterte has advocated vigilante justice, particularly against drug dealers and drug users.

Despite these concerning outcomes, we still lack the theory or evidence to link these disparate events. What makes these leaders or parties anti-democratic? Is it their willingness to trample on the civil liberties of minorities? Is it their willingness to undermine democratic institutions? The former is a threat to liberal values, while the second a greater threat to procedural democracy. In Europe (and in the US), the greater concern seems to be over anti-immigration, anti-globalisation nationalism. It is less clear that this translates outside of Europe to the Philippines, Indonesia, and Latin America, where the concerns centre on centralising power in the executive and dispensing with the rule of law. Both are obviously concerning, but the root causes and solutions are likely to be different.

The importance of diagnosing the nature of these anti-democratic appeals becomes important when we consider evidence for the democratic decline emerging from survey responses in the World Values Survey (WVS). Foa and Munck argue that democracy is under threat based on WVS data showing an increase in dissatisfaction with democracy and support for autocratic alternatives. Although the number respondents supporting autocratic alternatives remain in the minority, the numbers are increasing – particularly among younger respondents in the US and, to a lesser extent, Europe. This seems to suggest a growing rejection of democratic norms and support for autocratic alternatives, which should implicate both liberal norms and democratic institutions.

On the face of it, this evidence seems compelling. However, an easy interpretation is complicated when we consider that groups expressing dissatisfaction with democracy in WVS differ from those voting for the supposedly autocratic candidates. While the younger voters tend to exhibit less support for democracy in the WVS it is middle-aged and older voters that are more likely to support right wing candidates.

There are a number of reasons why this linkage might not be so easy. First, based on the “critical citizens” framework, it could be that dissatisfaction with democracy does not necessarily mean less support for democracy. Second, it could be that questions using the “d” word may not accurately measure support for the democratic values scholars have in mind when they construct the questionnaires.[2] In particular, confirmation bias or different conceptualisations of the term complicate interpretation of answers to these questions. As a partial solution, some surveys have attempted to ask about whether the respondent supports displacing parliament for a strongman, or allowing the military to rule. However, it is not clear whether or not these questions in isolation can capture support for autocracy or opposition to democracy. Indeed, in an abstract sense, most citizens would prefer not to have the military rule. However, this is not necessarily what we care about. The question is whether people are more willing to trade off democratic norms in the pursuit of certain goals.

Better ways of measuring people’s commitment to democracy

To get a better grasp on the nature of the problem, I have a few suggestions:

First, in addressing the potential linkages between the different campaigns, it would be useful to conduct text analysis of campaign speeches across countries and across time to assess whether or not there are similarities between anti-democratic candidates and parties across country contexts. Are the messages the same? Does we see a qualitative and quantitative shift from past threats to democracy?

Second, more work should be done to link the questions asked in surveys like the WVS directly to voting behaviour. Where we can identify candidates that appeal to anti-democratic tendencies, do we see voters expressing less confidence in democratic institutions voting for them?

Third, we must devise measures that better assess how citizens trade off support for democratic norms against their other substantive objectives. One potential avenue could be a greater use of contingent evaluation questions, which are most commonly used in market research. The most basic example is how much would consumers be willing to pay for increases in quality. Because simply asking whether consumers want high quality goods (“Yes!”) or lower prices (“Of course”) is unlikely to be interesting, these questions force respondents to identify the price they would pay for increases in quality.

In terms of support for democracy, one could ask respondents the degree to which they would trade support for democratic norms for specific substantive goals. How much are respondents willing to “pay” in democracy for a “win” on the range of issues (immigration, globalisation, inequality, environment). Would citizens support suspension of that country’s institutions to have a leader unilaterally impose a solution to one of these issues?

References

[1] Levitsky, Steven and Lucan Way. 2015. “The Myth of the Democratic Recession.” Journal of Democracy.

[2] Chu, Yun-Han and Min-hua Huang. 2010. “Solving an Asian Puzzle.” Journal of Democracy.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit.

Paul Schuler is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy. His research centres on authoritarian politics and democratic transitions. His regional focus is on Southeast Asia, with a particular specialisation on Vietnam. Previous work by Dr Schuler has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of East Asian Studies. 

In this exclusive extract from Brian Klaas’ new book, The Despot’s Accomplice, he argues that – however distasteful it may be to the principle of justice – offering despots a way out can prevent further bloodshed. This is because they frequently know they have nothing to lose by fighting to the death. Furthermore, research shows that countries which punish ex-leaders are more likely to fail to transition to democracy successfully.

A health record book left in the Quartier Guere district of Duekoue, Cote d’Ivoire, February 2011. Local people, most of whom were supporters of the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo, were driven out by forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara. Photo: Michael Fleshman via a CC-BY-SA 2.0 licence

‘It is a question of tolerating intolerance’: Asma Jilani Jahangir and Professor Amartya Sen discuss the impact of religious intolerance on democracy in a lecture at the LSE. Jahangir is a Pakistani human rights lawyer and social activist who co-founded and chaired the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University.

This month the Constitution Unit at UCL hosted a panel discussion on LGBT candidates in UK elections, exploring the UK parliament’s evolution to include more openly LGBT politicians than any other state legislature. The panel, chaired by Dr Jennifer Hudson, consisted of Professor Andrew Reynolds and four of the UK’s most prominent LGBT politicians: Angela Eagle, Baroness (Liz) Barker, Nick Herbert and Joanna Cherry. Evangelina Moisi reports.

Emeritus Professor of the Harvey Milk Institute Sue Sanders (left) with Angela Eagle. Photo: Zefrog via a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence

Introducing the seminar on LGBT candidates in UK elections, Professor Andrew Reynolds posed a question to the audience: why do people care about the sexual orientation of candidates and elected officials any more? Over the past few decades, the UK has undergone major transformations in its treatment of LGBT citizens, including abolishing Section 28 in 2003 and legalising gay marriage in 2013. The UK parliament has also become the most inclusive parliament for LGBT representation in the world, with 39 ‘out’ LGBT MPs. Despite this political (r)evolution, Reynolds suggested that not everything is settled: homophobia and transphobia are still significant in today’s society and present challenges for both adults and children in navigating their everyday lives.

This seminar provided the opportunity to understand the perspectives and narratives of those who have lived through this experience. Reynolds underscored that as ‘out’ LGBT politicians the members of the panel have all overcome significant hurdles to transform political life, values, and the laws of today.

Professor Andrew Reynolds

Opening the seminar, Reynolds presented highlights from some of his research, noting that the number of LGBT parliamentarians is still a tiny slice of the world’s representation. Only 0.4% of the 46,000 parliamentarians around the world identify as LGBT. However, the parties with significant representation in the House of Commons are among the most LGBT inclusive in the world – the Conservatives and Labour have 17 and 14 LGBT MPs respectively, whilst the SNP’s 8 (out of 54 MPs) makes them the ‘gayest’ parliamentary group in the world. Reynolds further elaborated that right-of-centre parties have actually overtaken left-of-centre parties in terms of LGBT MPs, in the UK and around the world. Gay rights have become less of a partisan issue, with conservatives becoming socially liberal but remaining economically conservative.

At the 2015 UK general election 154 LGBT candidates standing in England, Scotland, and Wales, enabling Reynolds to explore whether being an LGBT candidate was still an electoral liability. His research found that LGBT candidates did not perform worse than their straight colleagues and, perhaps surprisingly, gay candidates performed better in rural areas (a 2% boost). He also found that LGBT candidates did only slightly worse in areas with high Muslim populations. At the party level, LGBT Labour candidates performed better than their straight counterparts whereas LGBT Conservative candidates performed much better than their straight counterparts in winnable Conservative seats.

On a final note, Reynolds discussed Chris Smith’s ‘coming-out’ in 1984. Whilst the moment was greeted with a media backlash at the time, Smith is now the Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge and has returned to the highest echelons of British society as a gay, HIV-positive man. Reynolds emphasised that such dramatic changes in political life have been driven by the likes of Smith and the LGBT politicians present on the panel.

Angela Eagle (Labour MP)

Having lived through ‘both eras’, Eagle stressed that many like her have aspired to create a process that leads to equal opportunities for LGBT people, and to move away from a politics based on the prejudices she experienced when getting into politics. Prior to her coming-out in 1998 there had been only one previous lesbian MP, Maureen Colquhoun, and the example was not very encouraging. Colquhoun was ‘outed’ by gossip columnists at the Daily Mail in the 1970s and subsequently faced deselection attempts before losing her seat at the 1979 election. When growing up, Eagle saw newspapers engaging in enormous discrimination against LGBTs. The press often portrayed actions at the local level that sought to provide or legitimise services for LGBT people as actions of ‘looney left councils’. In Eagle’s words, these ‘looney left councils’ were so good at trying to represent all their constituents that they were suppressed by the Thatcher government through ‘Section 28’, which stated that local authorities or teaching in schools ‘shall not intentionally promote homosexuality’. This led to a stigmatisation and an isolation of LGBT people at school, allowing bullying to continue.

Nonetheless, Eagle noted that the 18-year period of Conservative rule disguised the mood of the population on the LGBT community, which came to be ‘ahead’ of the government. Because of this the change of government in 1997 enabled an opportunity for rapid progress for LGBT rights, notwithstanding having to use the Parliament Acts to make legislative changes, needing three attempts to repeal Section 28, and a backlash from the media. Eagle said that she knows progress has been made when people deny involvement with the previous repressive regime, and act as if this change was ‘just going to happen naturally’. However, such changes were greatly fought for. In closing her remarks, Eagle suggested that times can go from socially liberal to socially repressive, and ‘those who have come through must bear this in mind, whilst congratulating ourselves for being the gayest parliament in the world’.

Baroness (Liz) Barker (Liberal Democrat peer)

Barker began her contribution by quoting the Liberal Democrat Constitution’s statement that ‘no one should be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity’. She elaborated that the word ‘conformity’ was understood to be about personal differences and is a signal that LGBT people are an important part of the party. She further discussed her party’s role within the LGBT community: in 1979 the front page of Gay News said vote Liberal; they were the first party to have policies to repeal Section 28; their leader was the first to call for same-sex marriage and they have had many LGBT candidates running for election. However, Baroness Barker called attention to the intersectionality of women’s rights and LGBT rights – often these candidates were gay men and not gay women. She also highlighted the inherent problem that someone standing for public office historically had to be trustworthy, yet also had to hide an attribute so fundamental about themselves: being LGBT. The press and political opponents for a long time attacked this ‘area of weakness’ during elections, frequently emphasising a candidate’s status as a ‘family man’, cuing both sexual preference and trustworthiness.

Barker, who was made a life peer by Paddy Ashdown in 1999, never stood for elected office herself because she felt she could not be honest about who she was. It was not until after her mother’s death that she felt she could come out publicly, which she did during the debate on the same sex marriage legislation in the House of Lords. She observed that there were times before that when people threatened to ‘out’ her, yet friends and colleagues rallied round her. She ended her speech by agreeing with Eagle that there are still battles to struggle through, especially on transgender issues. She believes that big changes materialised when people were ‘out’ in both the main parties and previous statements made before could no longer be said in parliament.

Nick Herbert (Conservative MP)

Like Barker, Herbert is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global LGBT Rights. He sees himself firstly as a Conservative, and when elected did not want to make an issue of the fact that he was gay.  He is, however, proud to have been part of the change in Conservative attitudes led by David Cameron, including his apology for Section 28, the legalisation of gay marriage and supporting crucial legislative changes Labour achieved under Tony Blair’s leadership.

Whilst some Conservatives had previously ‘come out’ once elected, no one had been selected for a winnable seat as an LGBT candidate until Herbert in 2005 for Arundel and South Downs. Herbert mentioned that the Conservatives wanted to be non-discriminatory in their candidate selection process and so could not ask about marital status. However, many straight colleagues would bring up in interview if they were married or had children, echoing Barker’s statement about ‘family man’ and trustworthiness. When Herbert was shortlisted and then selected, he was candid about being gay and felt the issue uniting them should be that they were all Conservatives – regardless of sexual orientation.

Herbert lastly talked about his communication with the right-of-centre Australian Liberal Party on equal marriage. When rehearsing his arguments for them, he realised how far in the past these debates were in Britain, suggesting that colleagues who voted against gay marriage in 2013 would probably not vote against it now. He remarked that the greater representation of LGBT people is extremely important as role models for young people, revealing he received a letter from a young man thanking him for merely being elected. Like Eagle, Herbert stressed we should remember ‘that it was not long ago that it was all very different in our parties’.

Joanna Cherry (Scottish National Party MP)

Cherry’s speech focused mainly on the transformation of LGBT representation within Scottish politics. Like Eagle, Cherry lived through ‘both eras’ and wanted to be a Labour MP when growing up, but felt it was unthinkable to identify as a lesbian in Scottish public life at the time. The homophobic campaign (mainly by the Liberal Party) against Peter Tatchell during the Bermondsey 1983 by-election terrified her to be ‘out’ in public life. She noted that today the leaders of the Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Labour Party and Scottish Green Party are all LGBT.

When Cherry decided to run as an SNP candidate in 2015, being openly lesbian did not cause her any concern. Yet, she feels she owes this to those like Chris Smith and Angela Eagle who came out at a difficult time in the face of vilification from parts of the media. Even less than 20 years ago, when the Scottish Parliament tried to repeal the equivalent of Section 28, the Daily Record – a Labour supporting left-of-centre newspaper – campaigned against it. However, the same paper came out in support of the Equal Marriage Act in 2013. For many years it seemed like things would never change but ultimately, Cherry remarked, Tony Blair’s 1997 government was pivotal in achieving the social and political change in Scotland for LGBTs.

You can download Professor Andrew Reynolds’ slides at this link.

About the panel

Andrew Reynolds is Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina and author of The Children of Harvey Milk: How LGBTQ Politicians Changed the World (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

Angela Eagle is the Labour MP for Wallasey and a former member of the shadow cabinet.

Baroness (Liz) Barker is a Liberal Democrat peer.

Nick Herbert is the Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs and a former minister.

Joanna Cherry is the SNP MP for Edinburgh South West and her party’s Westminster spokesperson on justice and home affairs.

This post represents the views of the author and not Democratic Audit. It first appeared at the Constitution Unit blog.

Evangelina Moisi is a Research Volunteer at the Constitution Unit.

Until recently, television was the single most popular source of news. Now online sources have overtaken it as younger generations turn to apps and social media. Research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism shows only the BBC has a bigger reach than Facebook. Rasmus Klein Neilsen explains how trust in journalists and journalism, particularly among those on the left, is in decline.

Image: Tanja Cappell via a CC-BY-SA 2.0 licence

Where do people get their news?

News is the most important source of information about politics and public affairs for most citizens, as few of us have any real personal contact with politicians. But where did people in the UK get their news in the run-up to the General Election?

Research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford gives the answer — and the answer is online and from television. The campaign is therefore not only fought on the doorstep and the TV screen, but also increasingly on the internet. This changing media environment provides the arena in which political actors fight for our votes.

Recent years have seen the gradual erosion of television as the single most widely used source of news, to the point that by 2016 it has been overtaken by online sources in terms of reach — at least amongst the 92 percent of the UK population who has access to the internet. The reach of printed newspapers has declined rapidly in the same period, and social media has become much more important.

Half a century ago, the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting concluded that “until there is unmistakable proof to the contrary, the presumption must be that television is and will be a main factor in influencing the values and moral standards of our society.” Proof is now available that things are changing — television is still important, but people spend more time with digital media, and increasingly turn to digital media for news and politics as they do for so many other things.

Generational differences in news use

The move from traditional sources of news like television and printed newspapers is particularly clear if we look at differences between age groups. There are very clear generational divides. Asked to identify their main source of news, online comes out number one in every age group under 45 — and for those under 25, social media are by now more popular than television.

The television news audience is still large, but it is also old — and ageing — and younger people increasingly find their news from websites and apps, and via search engines and social media. By now, the BBC is the only news media organisation in the UK that reaches more people with online news than Facebook. In 2016, 51% of our respondents said they used the BBC online as a source of news, whereas 28% said they used Facebook for news — more than even the Mail Online (17%) or the Guardian (14%).

How do people find their news?

47% still say they go directly to the websites of broadcasters or newspapers for their news, but online, people increasingly find news via the various search (20%) and social media (25%) services offered by US-based platform companies like Google and Facebook. These have become integral to how people find and access news all over the world, including in the UK.

Some worry that the growing importance of these digital intermediaries might lead to the formation of echo chambers or filter bubbles, where people only get information from a few sources that largely confirm their pre-existing views (a situation we should be familiar with in the UK, given the proud tradition of partisan newspapers).

A closer look at the evidence suggest that the situation may in fact be the opposite — at least, people who get news via search engines and/or social media sites report using significantly more different sources of news than those who do not. Search engines and social media thus seem to lead people to a wider sources of news that they would have used otherwise.

What do people think of news and media?

Interestingly, the British population has a somewhat mixed view of the news they get, the media who provide it, and the journalists who produce it.

First of all, only about a third see the media as free from undue political influence, and just over a quarter as free from undue commercial influence.

Second, the journalistic profession does not fare much better. 29% say they trust journalists “most of the time” — a much lower figure than the 50% who say they trust the news that journalists produce.

If we break down the trust figures by whether people consider themselves politically on the left, in the centre, or on the right, it is clear that people on the left in the UK have particularly low levels of trust in news, whereas a majority on the centre and the right say they trust news “most of the time.”

A changing media environment (and political arena)

Media developments in the UK are in line with those seen across the world — a move to a more digital media environment, where traditional media like broadcasters and newspapers are still very important producers of news, but where many people increasingly find their news via search engines and social media.

This change is accompanied by continuity too, such as the long-running scepticism of both journalists and the news they produce, and the continued centrality of both public service media like the BBC committed to impartiality as well as private media like the Daily Mail and the Guardian with their more partisan take on the events of the day. Major newspapers are under pressure as their print business models continue to erode, but politically, they are important because they often still set the agenda for both television and online.

For some, this environment is a cornucopia of easily accessible news and information, and they embrace every opportunity at hand. A minority (18%) of news lovers are those who are very interested in news and use it many times a day.

The challenge for politicians can be, however, that as engaged and often vocal as these news lovers are, they are still a minority, and many people may feel they have more important things to do than follow the latest liveblog or tweet from Westminster. A large number of people (44%) — what we call “daily briefers” follow the news at least daily, but with less interest, and a significant group (37%) use news less than daily and have little or no interest. There is a clear polarisation in the news habits of more and less interested users — a polarisation that is perhaps even more significant than partisan differences in what media people use.

This mix of the established traditions and dynamics of the British media, and rapid change driven by the preferences of a younger generation and the possibilities offered by technology companies, provided the arena in which the general election campaign of 2017 played out.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit. It first appeared on Medium.

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is Director of Research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, and teaches in the Department of Politics and International Relations as well as the Blavatnik School of Government. He is a Research Associate of the Oxford Internet Institute.

Populism is not just a symptom of older people’s nostalgia for traditional values, writes Henrik P Bang. It is a rejection of a global neoliberal creed that pits individuals against each other. The hard-won social capital and notions of fairness that older generations prize have been replaced by a race for success in which human relationships exist as much online as in the real world. But if the young are not tempted by populism, they should realise that the technologies they have adopted can be used for political as well as technocratic ends.

A woman uses her phone in Trafalgar Square. Photo: Vladimir Yaitskiy via a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence

It is commonplace to discuss populism as an interim obstacle to liberal democracy’s development towards freedom and equality. Populism is widely claimed to result from a periodic growth and legitimation crisis, creating rising economic inequality and cultural backlash. This crisis threatens the crucial equilibrium between pluralism and stability in liberal democracy which is a precondition of keeping power in check and hinders its concentration and abuse. As Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart claim in Trump, Brexit and the Age of Populism (Harvard Kennedy School, 2016, p. 31):

‘Western societies face more unpredictable contests, anti-establishment populist challenges to the legitimacy of liberal democracy, and potential disruptions to long-established patterns of party competition’.

Populism is considered a menace because it leans towards authoritarianism and makes use of ‘gaslighting’ to win the public debate over those who try to reason and deliberate with it. Populism favours conflict over consensus and the national home of ‘the people’ over the globalised world of reflexive individuals.  But liberal democrats can console themselves that populism mostly enjoys support from the older generations (2016, p. 7):

‘They are the groups most likely to feel that they have become strangers from the predominant values in their own country, left behind by progressive tides of cultural change which they do not share.’

In particular, older white men are intolerant of all progress – ‘but this is a shrinking sector swimming against the tide of generational value change’ (p. 31). They will not be able to hinder the progress of values of globalisation and multiculturalism.

Populism in Norris’ and Inglehart’s analysis is more a generational conflict than a reaction against liberal democracy as such. In my view, however, it is neither. What nativist populism primarily reacts against are globalist neoliberalism, and its professionalisation and individualisation of politics from the local to the global. The reason why in particular ‘older white men’ have become so angry and hateful is surely not ‘traditional values’ but the undermining of the liberal democratic values of fairness, trust and equal opportunities that they have grown up with.

In fact, the neoliberalist takeover of liberal democracy has put an end to popular democracy as they know it. Only professionals from the private, public and voluntary domain count in globalist neoliberalism’s political system, and their networking and competitive games have left ‘the amateurs’ in their political community largely voiceless and powerless.  As Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser put it in their inspiring Populism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2017):

‘we define populism as a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.

Norris and Inglehardt (2016, p. 6) take Mudde and Kaltwasser’s definition to mean that populism is ‘a loose set of ideas that share three core features: anti establishment,  authoritarianism, and nativism.’ But this is not their position. In his view ‘populism is most fundamentally juxtaposed to liberal democracy rather than to democracy per se or to any other model of democracy.’ Hence, Mudde and Kaltwasser do not think that populism is ipso facto authoritarian, but, like Norris and Inglehardt, they do blur the difference between liberal democracy and neoliberalist democracy.

However, later on in their book, Mudde and Kaltwasser do admit that although populism mostly has occurred within the context of liberal democracy, it is primarily a reaction against the surrender of all ‘government-able’ parties on the left-right axis to globalist neoliberalism’s political economy.  As they emphasise: [even] ‘social democratic parties…have embraced economic globalisation, European integration, and multiculturalism.’  No one has expressed this change of goal in democracy from equal freedom to unceasing competition and growth better than the former Danish Minister of Finance, the social democrat Bjarne Corydon. In an interview from 2013, he announced: “I believe in the competition state as the new welfare state.”

Social capital and equality have been sidelined

The crisis for social democratic parties and the flight of their members and supporters towards populist parties has very much to do with their surrender to globalist neoliberalism’s idea of progress as based on professional managers’ permanent reform efforts. This is also why populism cannot be identified by ‘cultural backlash’ and ‘economic decline’ only – or even primarily. In the US, for example, liberal democracy has always been claimed to rely on the accumulation of social capital in the civic culture.  As Robert Putnam and Lewis Feldstein most succinctly have defined it in Better Together (N.Y. Simon and Schuster 2004, p. 9):

‘Creating robust social capital takes time and effort. For the most part, it develops through extensive and time-consuming face-to-face conversation between two individuals or among small groups. [This is required] to build the trust and mutual understanding that characterise the relationships that are the basis of social capital. So we see no way that social capital can be created instantaneously or en masse.’

The social democrats who shaped the Nordic welfare states were heavily influenced by this notion of social capital inherent to the US civic culture concept (Almond and Verba 1963). Like ‘older white men’ in the US they grew up in ‘slower’, less globalised and diversified times where communication and interaction were very much face-to-face and local in nature. They were socialised into believing that deliberation, negotiation and compromise take time and depend on ‘copresence‘, and relations of mutual trust. But neoliberalism prioritises competition and inequality over social capital and equality, and that obviously favours those ‘professionals’ who are better at exercising their human faculties for getting success and ‘making a difference’.

No wonder, therefore, that the tension between actors in political institutions and associated individuals in the political community today has grown to the point where democracy is approaching an existential crisis. Liberal democracy has traditionally emphasised the relationship between the building of robust institutions and the accumulation of social capital. But the populist notion of popular sovereignty as relying on the exercise of strong and decisive leadership has always been an element of liberal democracy as well. So in a way liberal democracy and populism form a political unity:

Table 1: The liberal-populist model

The crisis for democracy is that globalist neoliberalism is articulated up against all four cells in the liberal-populist model: it revolves around the relationship between soft and smart professional managers in the system, and reflexive individuals in the lifeworld. Globalist neoliberalism has converted politics into a public spectacle for ‘celebrities’ front stage and a technocratic reform game for managers backstage. It’s no wonder that populism has succeeded in portraying ‘the system’ as ‘rigged’ and as having robbed ‘the people’ of its dignity and sovereignty.  Meanwhile, populism is a reminder of the ‘good old days’ where popular rule was more than an empty word.

Why the young reject populist politics

But populism does not resonate with the young, who have grown up with global neoliberalist management. This has ‘nudged’ them to seek success above all else from the day they met each other in the daycare centre. The young are not disciplined to comply by ‘hard power’ and ‘duty norms’ but by ‘soft power’ and ‘engagement norms’. In addition, they have learned from day one that their own life is not a life peculiar to themselves. Everyone has to be active, inventive, faster, ‘change ready’ and self-responsible to attain success in neoliberalism’s competitive world.

Most young people would consider the idea of ‘robust, creative social capital’ surreal. They have no time for living such a slow and quiet life in any of their everyday practices. To the degree that they communicate and interact ‘face-to-face’, it is mostly online. They live their life in the virtual realities provided by smartphones, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and technological gadgets. Understandably, the old do not feel so much at ease in this virtual space as do the young. To the old, all the new gadgets are merely tools, whereas to the young they are inseparable parts of their personality.

The anxieties called forth by accelerating globalisation differ substantially between the generations. Many older people feel that their private and social spaces are being invaded and intimidated by undemocratic foreign forces and influences. In contrast, most young people are rather afraid that they will be outpaced by globalist neoliberalism and miss the possibilities for personal success and development afforded by it. This is another reason why populism mostly appeals to older generations. It reminds them of a more nativist, harmonious and quiet past where they did not always have to fear losing their jobs, houses or life due to ‘intruding foreigners’.

Perhaps the young can save democracy, and recouple system and lifeworld? The everyday world they live in is not like the system world of ‘professionals’. They are not just reflexive consumers and dedicated to success. They connect with each other in movements and organisations online and offline, to problematise how the globalised neoliberal technocracy handles the risks and challenges they confront in their everyday life.  They show that the road ahead for democracy is to ‘think globally and act locally’. It’s about time for the young to realise that they must extend these practices to cover active participation as voters, supporters and members of parties.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit.

Henrik P Bang is Professor of Governance at the University of Canberra Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis. This post reflects a recent talk given at the Politics Department, University of Sydney.

The British public has voted on membership of the EU on two occasions. In 1975, based on a turnout of 64 per cent, two-thirds voted to stay in the EEC, cementing Britain’s place for the next four decades. In 2016, on a turnout of 72 per cent, 52 per cent of the public voted to leave the EU, with 48 per cent supporting Remain. As Ben Clements (University of Leicester) observes, the political and ideological alignments underlying support for withdrawal were markedly different in 1975 and 2016. There were clearer similarities, though, in the socioeconomic correlates of support for remaining.

Piccadilly Circus in 1975, around a month after the referendum. Photo: srv007 via a CC-BY-NC 2.0 licence

The 1975 EEC referendum

Analysis of data from the BES 1974-75-79 panel study shows how different demographic groups and party supporters voted at the 1975 referendum. The results presented below are generally based on analysis of the October 1974 cross-section and the reinterview of that same sample via a postal survey conducted after the referendum. Based on demographic factors – shown in Figure 1 – 71 per cent of men voted to stay, as did 73 per cent of women. The pattern of voting across age groups showed that support for staying in the EEC was actually higher amongst older age groups: 80 per cent of those aged 65 and older voted in favour of membership, compared to 73 per cent and 72 per cent, respectively, of those aged 45-64 and 30-44; it was lowest at 62 per cent of those aged 18-29.

There was a generally consistent pattern, shown in Figure 2, whereby those in more secure socioeconomic circumstances were stronger supporters of membership. Based on social class, those in the AB social grade were most supportive of staying (85 per cent), followed by those in the C1 group (75 per cent), the C2 grade (64 per cent), and was lowest at 62 per cent of those in the DE group. Those in the DE and C2 groups (38 per cent) more than twice as likely to vote to leave as those in the AB group (15 per cent). Voting to stay was somewhat lower amongst union members (66 per cent) than those who were not a member of a union (74 per cent).

Amongst those who finished their education at an older age, support for membership was higher: at 86 per cent of those who completed aged 18 and older and 87 per cent of those who left at aged 17. It was 77 per cent amongst those who left aged 16, and was lowest amongst those who left aged 14 (69 per cent) or aged 15 (64 per cent), but rose to 79 per cent of those who left aged 13 or under. Based on housing tenure, support for membership was highest amongst those who owned their property outright (82 per cent) or who had a mortgage (76 per cent), and lowest amongst those who rented privately (66 per cent) or from a local council (62 per cent).

Based on a measure of party identification asked in the postal study after the referendum – see Figure 3 – 88 per cent of Conservative supporters said they voted to stay in the Common Market, as did 76 per cent of Liberal supporters. Support for remaining in the EEC was much lower amongst Labour supporters – although still a majority, at 58 per cent – and just 26 per cent amongst those supporting other parties, such as the Scottish and Welsh nationalists. Amongst those with no party affiliation, 63 per cent supported EEC membership. Labour supporters were more than three times as likely to vote to leave as Conservative supporters and nearly twice as likely as Liberal supporters. The locus of anti-Common market sentiment was centred on the left of British politics in the years leading up the referendum and subsequently. Labour Euroscepticism, as Saunders has noted, was rooted in concerns over the EEC being a capitalist club, that it betrayed Britain’s Commonwealth links, that it was bad for poorer countries, and it took money away from domestic priorities.

It is clear from the evidence presented in Figure 4 that in terms of policy debates central to the left-right axis of British politics – such as nationalisation, redistribution, the role of the trade unions, and the provision of welfare and services – those favouring left-wing solutions were less likely to have supported staying in. On the nationalisation-privatisation issue, those who backed a lot more (46 per cent) or a few more companies (65 per cent) being taken into state ownership were less fulsome in their backing for remaining than were those who favoured no further nationalisation (78 per cent) or who preferred more private companies (79 per cent). Amongst those who thought that government redistribution of wealth was very or fairly important, 65 per cent voted to stay, lower than the 74 per cent support for membership amongst those who were unsure on this issue and the 84 per cent support for membership amongst those who said redistribution was not important.

Pro-remain voting was also higher amongst those who supported social services being cut back a lot (73 per cent) or a bit (78 per cent), or who said they should stay as they are (73 per cent), compared to those who said more were needed (64 per cent). On welfare benefits, those who thought things had gone too far were more likely to have voted to remain in the Common Market (80 per cent), compared to 71 per cent of those who said things were about right and 62 per cent of those who said things had not gone far enough.

Left-wing opposition to the EEC was clearly evident in both party affiliations and in ideological leanings.

Based on newspaper readership, displayed in Figure 5, support for EEC membership was lowest amongst those who read the Sun (60 per cent) or the Mirror / Record (65 per cent) and stood at 71 per cent of those who read some other newspaper or did not read one. Support for membership was higher amongst readers of the Daily Express (78 per cent), Guardian (77 per cent), Daily Mail (89 per cent), and the Daily Telegraph (89 per cent). All of these papers had actually supported Britain staying in the EEC; only the Morning Star was opposed.

Looking at voting based on social or moral issues – asking whether particular societal behaviours or attitudes had gone too far, were about right or had not gone far enough – there is no consistent pattern, and the differences were generally of a smaller magnitude than for left-right issues. As is shown in Figure 6, those who said that pornography or respect had gone too far or were about right same were somewhat more likely to have voted in favour of membership, as were those who said abortion had gone too far. There was less or little variation based on views towards sex equality, racial equality, and law-breaking. Based on views towards immigration – specifically, whether it was important or not for the government to repatriate immigrants – support for membership stood at 68 per cent of those for whom this was important, 73 per cent amongst those who were not sure and 74 per cent of those who said it was not important.

Finally, we can assess voting in the 1975 referendum based on evaluations of leading party-political figures of the day, where respondents were asked to rate them on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. For each increment on the scale per leader evaluation, the proportion that voted to stay in the EEC is shown in Figure 7. Voting to remain in the EEC was generally lower amongst those with very negative ratings of Heath and amongst those with the most positive appraisals of Benn, Powell, and Wilson. Voting to remain tended to be highest amongst those with the most positive views of Heath and the most negative views of Wilson and Benn.

Overall, opposition to EEC membership was disproportionately found amongst those in the lower social grades, those who completed education at an earlier age (with the obvious exception of those leaving at aged 13 or under), trade union members, those living in Scotland (58 per cent supported membership in this survey), younger people, readers of The Sun and the Daily Mirror, Labour party supporters, and those with left-wing policy preferences.

Comparing voting at the 1975 and 2016 referendums

For the 2016 EU referendum, detailed results for group voting were provided in a NatCen report published in December 2016, and the findings discussed below are taken from this report. Voting to remain in the EU was somewhat higher amongst women than men and was much more prevalent amongst younger people in 2016, reflecting generational differences in Euroscepticism. This was not the case in 1975. There was a huge differential based on educational attainment: those with a degree-level qualification were least likely to have voted to withdraw; those with no qualifications were most likely to have voted to leave. Pro-leave voting was higher amongst those in lower income groups and amongst those renting their homes in the public sector. The less well-off and economically insecure were more likely to have voted against the EEC and, four decades hence, the EU.

However, the voting patterns in 2016 based on political factors show some important differences from those that prevailed in 1975, reflecting the fact that the locus of Euroscepticism in recent decades has been on the right of British politics. In terms of party support, voting to leave was strongest amongst backers of parties on the right: 98 per cent of UKIP supporters voted to leave and 58 per cent of Conservative supporters did the same (as did 70 per cent of those with no allegiance). Labour was seriously divided on the issue in 1975, with senior ministerial figures campaigning for and against the EEC, and Labour voters not being given clear or consistent party cues. In 2016, this was the situation in which the governing Conservative Party and its supporters found themselves. In 2016, just 36 per cent of Labour supporters voted to leave, as did 26 per cent of Liberal Democrat supporters, 21 per cent of Green Party supporters, and 26 per cent of those favouring other minor parties (including the SNP and Plaid).

Amongst newspaper readers, support for leave in 2016 was highest amongst those who read right-leaning tabloids – the Sun, Express, Mail, and Star – and then Telegraph readers. It was lower amongst those who read no paper or some other paper and Mirror readers; and lowest amongst readers of some of the broadsheets (Times, Guardian, Independent and Financial Times). In 1975, readers of the Telegraph, Express and Mail were strong backers of EEC membership.

Ideologically, in 2016, there was little difference the leave vote across those categorised as right, left, or in the centre, but it was much more common amongst those with an authoritarian orientation compared to those who were libertarian or neither. It was also much more prevalent amongst those with an anti-welfare disposition compared to those who were pro-welfare or neutral.

Conclusion

Comparing the patterns of voting, support for membership in both popular votes was concentrated amongst those with higher socioeconomic status. In 1975, pro-leave voting was more common amongst those in younger age groups; the opposite was the case in 2016. In 1975, those in living Scotland, Labour party supporters, and those of a left-wing disposition were strong components of the anti-Common Market vote, as were readers of the Daily Mirror. In 2016, the forces of the political right – whether based on party support for UKIP or the Conservatives, or anti-welfare and social authoritarian ideological dispositions, or newspaper readership – were pivotal to the decision to leave.

This article gives the views of the author, and not those of Democratic Audit. It first appeared at the LSE Brexit blog.

Ben Clements is Associate Professor at the School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester. He has had two books recently published by Palgrave Macmillan: Religion and Public Opinion in Britain: Continuity and Change and Surveying Christian Beliefs and Religious Debates in Post-War Britain.  

Most elections are now monitored by international election observers, whose presence is intended to deter vote-rigging and who report on whether the vote was ‘free and fair’. But after the Kenyan Constitutional Court nullified the recent elections there despite observers having approved them, the value of these missions has been questioned. Sophie Donszelmann (LSE), Cristoforo Simonetta (University of Florence) and Natalia Shvets (Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich) – all of whom have recently served as observers – argue that, when fraud often takes place before polling day and governments like Turkey’s ignore criticism of voting irregularities, the missions increasingly pay only lip service to democracy.

A member of the Commonwealth Observer Group during Rwandan elections in 2010. Photo: Commonweakth Secretariat via a CC-BY-NC 2.0 licence

On election days across the world, it’s not just citizens who head out to polling stations. Delegations of international election observers will also be there to audit election proceedings. They serve as watchdogs, guarding the integrity of the democratic process, and issue reports assessing whether the elections were held in accordance with international democratic standards. Inviting international election observers to audit elections has become the new democratic norm.

Election monitors: The opinions of ‘Hans’ and ‘George’

In a rejection of the OSCE’s election report after the 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum, President Erdoğan claimed that that his country did not need nor care “about the opinions of ‘Hans’ or ‘George’”. But who are these outsiders who come to observe elections?

National and international organisations such as the African Union, the Organization of American States, the European Union, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Commonwealth Nations or Carter Centre recruit, train and dispatch volunteers to serve as international election observers. Election observation missions (EOMs) usually deploy a small core team of experts to coordinate the mission, as well as 5-10 long-term observers (LTOs) and several short-term observers (STOs) who, under instructions from the LTOs, are deployed the last week of the election cycle and do the brunt of the observation. On election day, referred to as ‘e-day’ by observers, teams are dispatched to several polling stations across the country, armed only with an interpreter and forms on which to record their observations. The core team collates and analyses this information and later produces a report determining whether the election truly was ‘free and fair.’

Election observers now monitor around 80% of the world’s elections. Since the end of the Cold War, they have signified the new global norm for elections held in emerging and consolidated democracies. Yet as the list of observed elections grows, so do grievances against the observation processes.

The recent decision of the Kenyan Constitutional Court to nullify the results of the last presidential elections clearly demonstrates the limits of the election observation industry. The 2017 election was heralded by the head of the Organization for African Unity as ‘an example for all the continent’. Organisations such as the African Union, European Union and Carter Center announced there were “no signs of centralised or localised manipulation” in their preliminary reports on the election preparations. Yet the discovery of five million unverified ballots prompted Kenya’s constitutional court to annul the results and set a new election date. It became clear that the EOMs’ earlier praise was severely misplaced.

To some extent these inaccurate judgements can be expected, given that research shows that elections in Africa are significantly more likely than those elsewhere to be praised as free and fair despite evidence to the contrary. But this was neither the first nor only instance in which EOMs have failed to provide an accurate analysis. In 2013 the Council of Europe extolled the presidential elections in Azerbaijan as ‘free, fair and transparent’ despite the fact that the country’s Central Election Commission released the election ‘results’ one day before the actual election.

When organisations tasked with preventing electoral manipulations miss such blatant election fraud, their credibility and value plummets.

But maybe it’s the nature of election observation itself that undermines its own aims.

Election observation methodology stipulates that observers are to do just that, observe election proceedings. Even if there is clear evidence of electoral fraud such as vote buying, voter intimidation or ballot box stuffing, observers are prohibited from stepping in to correct or comment in real time – it can only be recorded and included in the EOM’s final report, greatly limiting the observers’ mandate.

Watchdogs chasing their tails

Another limitation is that observers can only really work with what’s in front of them. Marietje Schaake, head of the EU delegation to Kenya, admitted their mission was limited by too great a focus on the circumstances in polling stations on e-day, with too little attention paid to the digital transmission of election results, which is where most of the electoral fraud occurred. The presence of outside observers is supposed to deter election fraud – when you know someone is watching you, you become significantly less likely to (at least blatantly) transgress. In many instances, observers report feeling respected and, in some cases, even feared by the poll workers when they enter the polling station. Monitors wield this soft power of respect and understanding as their main tool to deter fraud.

However, most electoral transgressions often happen before ‘e-day’, which to a great extent renders observers’ presence on the ground redundant – all bark and no bite.

A slap on the wrist and subsequent worldwide media attention does little to rectify fraudulent election proceedings, when those being condemned aren’t concerned about the outcome. After the OSCE and the Council of Europe criticised Turkey’s 2017 constitutional referendum, the Turkish government rejected their observations, declaring the OSCE’s to be ‘based on biased and prejudiced approaches.’ Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed that the country had conducted the most democratic vote in its history: case closed. The most important tool EOMs have in their armoury is the ability to “name and shame”, which is intended to change the transgressor’s behaviour by credibly bringing the violations to light. Yet to those who aren’t concerned about receiving international approval or praise, written and verbal condemnations often fall on deaf ears or are swatted away. Erdoğan felt he didn’t need foreigners – the ‘Hans’’ and “Georges’ of international delegations – to tell him what to do in his country. As the president retorted, “we’ll continue on our path. Talk to the hand.”

However, the real problem is political. EOMs sent to countries still in the process of consolidating their democracies often face the same moral dilemma: even in elections with clear electoral irregularities, EOMs will refrain from reporting on wrongdoings for fear of bringing political instability or being barred from observing future elections.  Too afraid of complicating matters, the mission’s core team concluding reports will classify the election as ‘good enough,’ damming them with fake praise while acknowledging polling station wrongdoings, but stopping short of saying that they were not ‘free and fair’ – the apparent approach of international observation missions in Kenya’s first election. However, the omission of any kind of condemnation imagines these countries will rectify their own errors in due course. This optimism is grossly misplaced and once again undermines the EOMs’ core purpose. The increasing tendency of EOMs to choose this safer option will eventually rob observation missions of their ability to enact change and serve as a democratising force. They are really only paying lip service to the democratic process.

This post represents the views of the authors and not those of Democratic Audit.

Sophie Donszelmann is the Centre Assistant and USAPP Blog Editor in the LSE United States Centre, situated within the LSE’s Institute of Global Affairs. Sophie served on observation missions to the UK’s 2017 General Election and 2017 German Federal Elections. She holds an undergraduate degree in Government from the LSE.

Cristoforo Simonetta is a research student in European Studies at University of Florence. After completing an intensive election observation course in 2015, Cristoforo served on monitoring delegations to the Brexit referendum and 2017 German federal elections. He now works at the Bringing Europeans Together Association e.V. (BETA).

Natalia Shvets is a graduate student of political science and assistant in the Comparative Political Systems department with a focus on CIS and Eastern Middle Europe at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. Natalia served on observation missions to the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election and 2017 German federal elections.

With the rise of far-right parties in Europe during the 2000s, some centre-right parties spotted an opportunity to win back votes by pivoting towards immigration. James F Downes (Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Matthew Loveless (European University Institute) find that they were more successful if they were out of government at the time. Incumbent centre-right parties, on the other hand, struggled to cut through on the issue.

City council election posters in Middelburg, the Netherlands, 2014. The centre-right VVD tells residents Dauwendaele is for them, not for criminals. Photo: Wouter de Bruijn via a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence

What has driven the resurgence of the far right in Europe? The broad consensus is that this ‘political earthquake’ can be explained by three key issues: concerns about immigration, dissatisfaction with the EU project and a lack of trust in mainstream parties.

At the same time, it is often assumed that the far right has monopolised and laid claim to the immigration issue from mainstream parties on both the left and right. But recent research by Sergi Pardos-Prado has demonstrated that, in fact, some centre right parties may have shifted their stances on immigration too, adopting a more anti-immigrant stance in order to counteract the threat from far right parties.

We argue that mainstream centre right parties are able to do this more effectively than the ‘party families’ on the centre left. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, on immigration, centre right parties are closer spatially to populist radical right parties than centre left parties often are. In numerous cases – such as in the UK, the Netherlands and France – centre right parties have been ‘closer’ to radical right spaces, and have also made the issue salient in their party manifestos. When centre left parties have engaged with immigration, they have generally seen mixed electoral fortunes. Some scholars have also argued that centre left parties are more constrained on the immigration issue than centre right parties are, due to their internationalist outlook.

Arguably, immigration is directly linked to key centre right issues such as keeping taxation low and maintaining law and order alongside national security, and these are likely to appeal to a core base of the centre right electorate. The centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy in the Netherlands (VVD), for example, has pivoted on immigration before, having done so in reaction to the success of the far right List Pim Fortuyn in the early 2000s.

Centre-right parties recognised the 2008 economic crisis as a time of greater voter volatility (with an anti-incumbency effect), during which the populist radical right would try to secure more support through appeals to fears about immigration. Looking at parties’ electoral performances during the economic crisis in 24 EU countries (Figure 1), we found that specific centre right parties sought to respond with a ‘strategic emphasis’ on immigration in order to win over more voters.

While this effect is statistically significant, a closer inspection of the dataset showed that a specific ‘type’ of centre right party performed electorally better – namely ’challenger’ centre right parties that were not in government at the time of the economic crisis. Our results are also surprising because they depart from recent research that shows the importance of issue positions. Instead, our findings correspond to the issue salience model of voting, and the importance of centre right parties making immigration a salient issue in their party strategies, as opposed to adopting anti-immigrant stances. Tables 1 and 2 outline a summary of these specific cases below in more detail.

These ‘challenger’ centre right parties emphasised immigration and did better than, or at least ‘matched’, the electoral success of the respective far right party. Examples include centre right parties such as the New Flemish Alliance Party (N-VA) in Belgium, and the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy in the Netherlands (VVD). A number of centre right parties did not perform better during the economic crisis period. This happened particularly if (i) they were incumbents and punished in line with theories of economic voting (Union for a Popular Movement/UMP in France), or if (ii) they did not emphasise immigration (the National Coalition Party/KOK in Finland). Far right parties such as the True Finns in Finland and the Front National in France arguably prospered as a result. So there are limits on how useful emphasising immigration can be in economically tough times.

Figure 1: Regression coefficient plot with 95% confidence intervals (inclusion of control variables)

Source: Original dataset on change in parties’ performance in European National Parliamentary Elections and Rohrschneider–Whitefield Expert Survey.

Source: Original Dataset on Change of Parties’ Performance in European National Parliamentary Elections and Rohrschneider–Whitefield Expert Survey.

Table 1: Centre-right and populist radical right party competition in the crisis period, by country and election years

Source: authors’ own

Table 2: Cases-conditions of centre right–far right party competition on immigration

Source: authors’ own

• * = denotes ‘relative’ levels of electoral success (i.e. increase in vote share, but did not translate into ‘significant’ seat gains.
• ** = denotes that there is no significant other ‘challenger’ centre right party in these countries.

The political scientist Herbert Kitschelt coined the phrase ‘electoral winning formula’ to describe the electoral success that specific radical right parties achieved in the 1990s by adopting neo-liberal economic positions alongside hardline positions on issues such as crime, law and order and immigration. Our findings suggest that during economic crises centre-right parties can win more votes by stressing immigration. Sometimes the centre right can even outperform the populist radical right electorally on this issue. Centre-right parties that were in opposition (such as N-VA in Belgium and VVD in the Netherlands) during economic downturns were not tainted by anti-incumbency effects, and therefore had more freedom to compete on the immigration issue with populist radical right parties. Further research should examine the strategies of both party families on immigration in the context of the ongoing refugee crisis.

This post represents the views of the authors and not those of Democratic Audit. It is based on a working paper, “Center Right and Radical Right Party Competition in Europe: Strategic Emphasis on Immigration, Incumbency and Economic Crisis”. Some of the materials in this article are also take from the author’s PhD thesis: Downes, James F. (2017) ‘A New Electoral Winning Formula?’ Beyond the Populist Radical Right: Center Right Party Electoral Success, ‘Strategic Emphasis’ and Incumbency Effects on Immigration in the 21st Century.’

James F Downes (Twitter @JamesFDownes) is a Lecturer in Political Science in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also an Affiliated Visiting Research Fellow (Honorary) at the Europe Asia Policy Centre for Comparative Studies. 

Matthew Loveless is a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute.

Does the European Parliament adequately represent the views of European citizens? Drawing on a recent study, Miriam Sorace (LSE) illustrates that while the Parliament is often criticised for being too distant from its voters, it is far more representative of the views of voters than commonly thought. Nevertheless, a lack of information about European election campaigns, as well as a tendency for some voters to cast protest votes, can lead to individual voters being less well represented.

If one renounces rhetoric and embraces concrete evidence, however, a less apocalyptic picture emerges. The European Parliament, for example, is attentive to and does represent European voters, on average. In fact, it appears to serve European public opinion pretty well. Decision-making in some EU institutions may well be complex and difficult to monitor – we are talking about coordinating almost 30 independent states! – but saying that the EU is an entirely democracy-free zone appears grossly misleading.

Is the EP representative?

In a recent study on substantive representation in the European Parliament, I compare the economic policy preferences of voters in the 2009 European Parliament election with the actions taken by national parties during the 7th term of the Parliament (2009-2014). The economic policy preferences (on redistribution, privatisation and state ownership) of individual European voters were measured from the voter survey of the 2009 European Election Study. The legislative activity of national parties was evaluated from the text of their written parliamentary questions on economic policy. The parliamentary texts were coded by trained online coders (approximately 6 coders per text) via ‘crowdsourcing’, a content analysis technique which relies on the ‘average of averages’ procedure to come up with the final party ideological score in economic policy.

A crucial measure of the representativeness of legislative institutions as a whole relies on the comparison of legislative parties’ and voters’ ideological distributions. the ideological distributions of average party voters and of EP7 national parties. Figure 1 below compares the distribution of average party voters’ preferences with the distribution of EP7 national party preferences as retrieved from their written parliamentary questions.

Figure 1: Cumulative distribution functions of party voters’ and EP7 parties’ ideology in economic policy

Note: The dashed line indicates the position of the average voter of each national party included in the analysis. The solid line indicates the ideological positions of all EP7 national parties included in the analysis. The statistical significance of cumulative distribution functions difference was obtained by means of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and it amounts to 0.298***.

Figure 1 indicates that average party voters are broadly well represented in the EP, but also that the two distributions are different to a statistically significant degree. The two points of the curve where there is a lack of overlap are the left-of-centre and the right-wing sections. Figure 1 indicates that there are more political parties in the section slightly left of centre than there are party voters, and that there are more voters in the right-wing section than there are parties. The average position of European voters (slightly left of centre) is therefore over-represented by political parties serving in the EP7. The EP7 very accurately represented the middle of the 2009 party voters’ ideological distribution. Political parties representing extreme voters, however, appear to have moved towards the centre, leaving some ideological positions without representation, especially on the economic right. The representation deficit of the European Parliament is, therefore, at most a ‘pluralism’ deficit given that the majoritarian norm of democracy seems respected.

National parties serving in the 7th European Parliament converged either for electoral reasons – to satisfy the majority of European voters – or because of the highly consensual nature of EU institutions, which foster compromise to the average position. This ‘move away’ from some average party voters (especially extreme ones) towards the median voter is not different from what has been found in many established Western democracies. According to majoritarianism, the ‘median’ voter does tend to be over-represented in a democracy, as it should be. The European Parliament – and, by logical extension, the EU – is not a ‘democracy-free zone’.

Individual-level findings: Are some voters better represented than others?

It is important to investigate who the ‘left-behind’ voters are, to further investigate the nature of political representation in the EP. Very broadly, political representation theory highlights two main explanations for the failure of some politicians to represent their voters’ preferences: (1) problems in information transmission, and (2) structural biases against specific social groups. The first explanation relates to the ‘political agency model’ of representative democracies, which emphasises the need for complete and perfect information for good political representation. The second explanation is associated with participatory and Marxist models of democracy, which emphasise accurate descriptive representation, and/or equality in political participation for good political representation.

An individual-level regression model was designed to test the theories briefly outlined above. ‘Flawed’ representation is here defined as incongruence, i.e. the absolute distance between individual voters and the political parties they voted for in the 2009 election. Figures 2 and 3 provide an overview of the most important results.

Figure 2: Predicted incongruence of political parties due to ‘bad selection’ and voter ‘extremism’

Note: See the author’s accompanying study for more information.

The regression results confirm that individual voters suffer high levels of incongruence if they vote for a party whose average constituent is far away from them (incompetent/incorrect vote), and if they are ideologically distant from the average European voter. These two variables have very substantial effects on incongruence, especially the variable capturing voter extremism.

They lend credence to the ‘political agency’ theory in that it is important to select political parties whose voter base is close to one’s own ideology to be represented. They further demonstrate how the EP conforms to majoritarian democracy in demonstrating that individual voters farthest away from the average European voter are most incongruent with their party.

Figure 3: Predicted incongruence of political parties by voter information, protest voting behaviour and social class

Note: See the author’s accompanying study for more information.

The regression results further lend credence to the political agency theory in that informational disconnect between voters and parties (such as disengagement with the electoral campaign and second-order, or protest, voting) increase incongruence between the individual voter and his/her party, while social class does not seem to matter.

Social class differences in political participation and in the composition of parliaments have previously been documented. However, these structural disadvantages of the working classes do not seem to lead to higher incongruence at the European Parliament level. If anything, the upper classes seem to suffer from slightly higher incongruence. The social class non-finding is heartening, given the class biases in political representation that have been documented in established democracies.

Implications

My study demonstrates that majoritarian democracy is reflected in the legislative politics of the EU. Written parliamentary questions are one of the most popular forms of legislative activity in the European Parliament. They represent an avenue through which all MEPs, irrespective of their roles and political pedigree, can communicate with EU executives. They are an activity through which MEPs can push an issue into the EU policy-making agenda (written questions’ descriptives are available upon request).

The analysis shows that the average European is very well represented in these ‘inputs’ to the EU political system, and that representation flaws are due to voters’ extremism, to voters not voting appropriately (e.g. selecting a party whose constituent base is ideologically ‘far’ from them, or engaging in second-order/protest voting) or to voters not following the European Parliament election campaign. Social group biases due to structural inequalities are not at all evident in the European Parliament.

The EP does not have a representation deficit: where there is incongruence, it is due to voters not being able to select the appropriate party. This further indicates that EP elections need reform: the era of ‘second-order elections’ and national governments running EP election campaigns must end if we want to counteract the information gaps between MEPs and citizens.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit. It first appeared at LSE EUROPP 

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About the author

Miriam Sorace is an LSE Fellow at the European Institute.