Party Careers and Electoral Success - The Structural Effect of Political Parties on Candidates’ Success

• In Event: 066 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Political Parties

Abstract

In parliamentarian elections, political parties decide on the ranking of candidates. Since this ranking is highly correlated with the electoral success of candidates, political parties are central to understand why some candidates have more electoral success than others. I argue that political parties choose candidates with a party career that signals the ability to win an election and loyalty to the party’s political goals. Variation in party careers are therefore connected to variation in candidates’ electoral success. I test this hypothesis by applying generalized linear models on an extensive dataset of candidates for the Norwegian parliament between 1946 and 2010. The results support the theoretical argument. However, there is also evidence that party careers are less important for candidates that just win respectively miss a seat in parliament.

Author

• Timo Böhm, University of Mannheim