‘It’s a Long Way from Kuusamo to Kuhmo’: Mapping Candidates’ Electoral Constituencies in the Finnish Open-List Single Preference Voting System

Published date01 August 2021
DOI10.1177/1478929920982509
Date01 August 2021
Subject MatterSpecial Issue: The Electoral Connection Revisited: Personal Vote-Seeking Efforts in the Era of Political Personalization
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920982509
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(3) 334 –354
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920982509
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‘It’s a Long Way from
Kuusamo to Kuhmo’: Mapping
Candidates’ Electoral
Constituencies in the Finnish
Open-List Single Preference
Voting System
David Arter
Abstract
This article seeks an insight into the nature of intraparty competition in an open-list single
preference voting system, and it does so by analysing the distribution of votes for Centre Party
candidates in the 40 or so municipalities making up the northern Finnish constituency of Oulu
in each of the five general elections between 2003 and 2019. It builds on Grofman’s distinction
between a geographical constituency and a candidate’s electoral constituency to map the ecology
of candidate support in a constituency with (1) a larger than average district magnitude (M); (2)
a significantly larger than average territorial magnitude (T); and (3) a substantially larger than
average Centre party magnitude (P). Setting M, T and P within a party organisational framework,
the article identifies (1) a significant disparity between levels of intraparty competition at district
and sub-district levels; (2) several contextual factors that act more as disincentives than incentives
to engage in personal vote seeking across the electoral district.
Keywords
personal vote, preference voting, intraparty competition, Finland, candidate constituencies
Accepted: 25 November 2020
Introduction
The focus of this article is on the ecology of the personal vote (Cain, 1987; Carey and
Shugart, 1995; Shugart, 2008; Swindle, 2002; Zittel, 2017) in a ‘personalised electoral
system’ (Pilet and Renwick, 2018) – Finnish open-list PR – that obliges voters to express
a single preference among individual candidates and determine who is elected. The
Faculty of Management, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
Corresponding author:
David Arter, Faculty of Management, Tampere University, Pinni A 4054, 33104 Tampere, Finland.
Email: david.arter@tuni.fi
982509PSW0010.1177/1478929920982509Political Studies ReviewArter
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
Arter 335
central question runs: what, if anything, can be inferred about personal vote seeking and
patterns of intraparty competition from the distribution of the personal vote in an electoral
system that appears to create strong incentives for candidates to compete with their co-
partisans? The analysis seeks to complement and supplement the personal vote literature
in at least two ways. First, it sets the personal vote and personal vote seeking in a party
organisational framework following Bergman et al. (2013: 332) who, in their analysis of
the distribution of the candidate vote in two non-transferable voting systems, single non-
transferable vote (SNTV) and open-list proportional representation (OLPR), expressly
argue for the inclusion of ‘party-level factors’. Second, in contrast to the main thrust of
the personal vote literature (Carey and Shugart, 1995; Crisp et al., 2007; Shugart, 2008),
which derives personal voting seeking incentives exclusively from district-level variables
– district magnitude or party magnitude – this article adopts a within-district perspective
using the municipality as the basic unit of analysis (cf. André and Depauw, 2019).
André and Depauw (2018: 269) have noted that ‘the growing personal vote literature
has rarely examined whether legislators spread their efforts to cultivate personal votes
around the district or specialise locally’ and they stress the role of district magnitude – the
seat allocation per district – in shaping geographical sub-constituencies. Relatedly, this
article builds on Grofman’s (2005) distinction between a geographical constituency – the
territorial unit from which voters choose representatives to a legislative body – and a
candidate’s electoral constituency – the territorial boundaries of his or her individual vote
– to map the contours of the personal vote in Oulu, a constituency in northern Finland
with a larger-than-average district magnitude (M), a significantly larger-than-average ter-
ritorial magnitude (T) and a substantially larger-than-average Centre party magnitude (P).
When M, T and P are set within a party organisational framework and the distribution of
the personal vote analysed by municipality, (1) a significant disparity is observed in the
extent of intraparty competition between district and sub-district levels when measured in
terms of the ‘effective number of municipal co-partisans’ (Laakso and Taagepera, 1979);
(2) several contextual factors emerge that serve more as disincentives than incentives to
cultivate a personal vote across the electoral district (constituency and electoral district
are used interchangeably in this article).
The structure of the article is as follows. The opening section reviews some main
themes from the personal vote literature and the incentive to engage in personal vote
seeking in particular. There are then brief notes on ways of measuring intraparty competi-
tion, the basis for the case selection and the Centre’s organisation in the Oulu constitu-
ency. Building on Grofman’s notion of candidates’ electoral constituencies, hypotheses
relating to the structure and content of these constituencies are presented. After data and
results sections, the concluding discussion revisits the central question of what the geog-
raphy of the personal vote indicates about personal vote seeking and the nature of intra-
party competition.
The Determinants of Personal Vote Seeking
Simplifying somewhat, the personal vote literature has focused on two main themes – a
candidate’s personal vote-earning attributes (Campbell and Cowley, 2014; Coffé and von
Schoultz, 2020; Sällberg and Hansen, 2020; Tavits, 2010) and the incentives for candi-
dates to engage in personal vote seeking by elevating these attributes above their partisan
credentials (André and Depauw, 2014; Carey and Shugart, 1995; Crisp et al., 2007). The
calculus in the ‘incentives literature’ has been anchored solely in district-level variables,

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