This analysis shows that some of the criticism against the system with personal votes has been unfounded. Our results show that personal votes are of great importance for the party distribution of commissions of trust and their place on the ballot in the next election period, which has been disregarded in previous studies.
PERONAL VOTES Since 1998, Sweden has a system with personal votes where voters can tick at least one individual politician. Those politicians that get at least 50 individual votes and at least 5 per cent of the total number of votes for the party in a constituency are elected “as individuals”. This analysis shows that some of the criticism against the system with personal votes has been unfounded. Our results show that personal votes are of great importance for the party distribution of commissions of trust and their place on the ballot in the next election period, which has been disregarded in previous studies. Thus, it is not a waste to tick a politician who is placed high on the ballot and who would have been elected even without the tick.
ABOUT THE CRITICISM Few politicians have been elected purely on basis of personal votes since 9 out of 10 votes have been for politicians that were located so high on the ballot that they did not need personal votes to be elected. Thus, the system with personal votes is said to have failed to let the voters affect the ranking on the lists.
ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF PERSONAL VOTES When parties are to compile lists before the elections and distribute the positions of trust within party groups, personal votes constitute one of the few information sources on voter support. Through their personal votes, voters do thus give a signal to the parties about what politicians they support, a signal that the parties also seem responsive to. As compared to other factors, such as political experience and education, personal votes are of great importance. On this basis, we can draw the conclusion that the system with personal votes, in contrast to what has been claimed by its critics, has succeed in changing the ranking on the lists.
AUTHORS
Olle Folke has a PhD in Economics and works at Columbia University, New York, and the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN). E-mail: of2152@columbia.edu.
Johanna Rickne has a PhD in Economics and works at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) and Uppsala Center for Labor Studies, Uppsala University. E-mail: Johanna.Rickne@ifn.se.