This paper completes Meirowitz (2008) by analyzing the effect of a cap on political campaign spending in an environment where voters have initial preferences over political candidates. The policy implications are starkly different from the previously analyzed case where voters are indifferent...

Political campaign spending ceilings are purported to limit the incumbent's ability to exploit his fundraising advantage. If the challenger does not have superior campaign effectiveness, in contrast to conventional wisdom, we show that the incumbent always benefits from a limit as long as he has...

This paper presents a simple statistical exercise to provide a benchmark for the degree of electoral stagnation without direct officeholder benefits or challenger scare-off effects. Here electoral stagnation arises solely due to incumbent-quality advantage where the higher quality candidate wins...

This paper presents evidence of ballot order effects in Irish General Elections, where candidates are listed in alphabetical order. Data relating to elections from 1977 to 2011 suggest the effect is significant in a statistical sense and in magnitude. The nature of the Irish electoral system...

One of the most consistent findings in studies of electoral behaviour is that individuals with higher education have a greater propensity to vote. The nature of this relationship is much debated, with US studies generally finding evidence of a causal relationship, while European studies...

Party politics in Ireland has been characterised as politics without a social base. This paper calculates political concentration indices for party support in Ireland showing how support for a particular party is concentrated according to identifiable dimensions such as income, education and...