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A review essay on a book by Harold Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne Stewart, & Paul Whiteley, Political Choice in Britain (Oxford: Oxford U Press, 2004). 12 References.

Singapore's 2020 general election was held amidst the country's most serious public health and economic crises in the country's history. Despite expectations that these parallel crises would precipitate a flight to safety and result in a strong performance by the dominant People's Action Party (PAP), the ruling party received its third lowest popular vote share (61.2%) and lowest ever seat share (89.2%) since independence. This article engages explanations for the unexpected results and argues that the vote swing against the PAP was enabled by a hitherto largely overlooked factor: the 2020 election included two opposition parties that could credibly compete with the PAP on the valence considerations that drive voting behaviour in Singapore, giving voters a perceived safe alternative to the PAP at the constituency level. Quantitative tests support the notion that party credibility—rather than demographic factors, incumbency advantages, Group Representation Constituencies, or assessments of the PAP's fourth generation leaders—best explain variation in the vote swing against the PAP. Ultimately, the results suggest that the PAP's monopoly on party credibility is no longer assured, thus portending greater opposition competitiveness and pressure against the PAP in future elections. Nonetheless, the PAP's dominance remains intact and there is little evidence of a general appetite among the electorate for a non-PAP government, suggesting the likelihood of smaller course corrections rather than major steps towards democratization in the coming years (Pac Aff/GIGA)

In this article we use evidence from the Scottish Election Study 2007 to build an explanation for the narrow SNP victory in the Holyrood election. The theoretical focus is on valence models of voting, which are increasingly important in Scotland following dealignment and ideological convergence in the party system, and as Scottish governments flex their executive muscle. Exploring the valence battleground reveals mixed but overall negative evaluations of Labour's performance in government, and suggests advantages for the SNP on issue competence, leadership and party image. Modelling party choice at the individual level shows that key valence variables – performance evaluations, economic competence and party image – have strong and significant effects, unlike hitherto prominent factors like religion, class and national identity. Constitutional preferences are important too, but their effects suggest a further valence link: the SNP's strong showing among voters seeking further devolution but opposed to independence is due in large part to its credentials as a battler for Scottish interests. In contrast, Labour's stand against 'more powers' may have tarnished its own reputation on that score. We conclude that the SNP edged home by persuading enough voters that it had a positive agenda for governing Scotland within the current constitutional arrangements, and that it could deliver on that agenda.

This paper investigates factors affecting voting behavior in Canada's October 2008 federal election. The election was held in the context of a rapidly worsening financial crisis that threatened to become a global economic meltdown. National survey data gathered in the 2008 Political Support in Canada Study reveal that the deteriorating economy trumped the opposition Liberal Party's Green Shift Program as the major campaign issue by a huge margin. Damage done to the governing Conservatives by the economic crisis was limited by perceptions of their leader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Analyses of a mixed logit model of electoral choice shows that although the Conservatives had a relatively small share of party identifiers and Harper was widely disliked, his image as "safe pair on hands" helped his party weather the political storm generated by the flood of bad economic news. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]