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Alphabetic bias in partisan elections: Patterns of voting for the Spanish Senate, 1982 and 1986
Electoral Studies (1988), 7:3, 225-231
Alphabetic Bias in Partisan Elections: Patterns of Voting for the Spanish Senate, 1982 and 1986 AREND LIJPHART University of California, San Diego, Lo Jolla, CA 92093,
USA
RAFAEL UPEZ PINTOR Universidad Autonoma,
Madrid, Spain
Recent research has suggested that, in partisan elections, candidates derive no special advantage from being placed first or as high as possible on the ballot, and that, consequently, measures to neutralize this alphabetic or positional hias are unnecessary. We warn against these conclusions, and analyse one case of particularly clear alphabetic voting: the 1982 and 1986 Senate elections in Spain. The aggregate alphabetic advantage that candidates enjoyed over their party’s next lower candidates on the hallot ranged from 1.7 to 3.7 per cent. And, in both elections, more than 10 per cent of the 188 senators elected in four-member districts can he shown to have heen elected as a result of their alphabetic advantage.
The phenomenon high as possible
of positional
bias-that
on the ballot-has
it is to a candidate’s
been known
advantage
to be first or as
for a long time; since candidates
are usually
bias. In Robert Darcy’s (1986: 648) words, the positional or alphabetic bias is ‘part of the folklore of politics’. However, two recent studies have cast grave doubts on the existence of this bias in partisan elections. In primary elections (where voters choose candidates within parties) and in non-partisan general elections, there may be a significant advantage to being listed on the top of the ballot, but when voting entails a partisan choice, the party cue is said to be sufficiently strong to negate alphabetic voting. Darcy (1986: 649) found ‘no evidence that there is ballot position advantage in general elections ’ in the United States. listed alphabetically,
this advantage
may also be called the alphabetic
226
A~~~a~et~ Bias in Partisan Elections
all elections in the world’s democracies are partisan-primaries and non-partisan elections are almost exclusively American institutions-and compulsory voting is quite rare. Hence it seems safe to assume that, with the exception of the United States and a handful of compulsory voting countries, there is no alphabetic bias at all. This conclusion also has a practical aspect; if there is no alphabetic bias, there is no need to take any measures to counter its effects, such as rotating the candidates’ names on the ballots. Since ballot rotation adds to the cost and complexity of conducting elections, the conclusion that it is unnecessary would be a happy one. In this note, we want to warn against accepting the above conclusions as generally valid. We shall first discuss one case--the election of the Senate (the upper house of the legislature) in Spain in 1982 and 1986-which shows clear and strong evidence of alphabetic voting in a partisan election. Secondly, we shall suggest how the general conclusions proposed by Darcy, Kelley, and McAllister should be modified. The focus should be on the degree of alphabetic bias in different circumstances instead of on the question of its absence or presence. We shall argue that the available evidence permits only one conclusion: alphabetic voting is never a strong force-it ranges from extremely weak to moderately weak-but it does appear to be a universal and tenacious phenomenon. Senate elections in Spain are especially interesting in this respect for three reasons. First, as already indicated, the alphabetic bias manifests itself in unusually clear form. Second, the electoral system used for senatorial elections, to be described shortly, gives the alphabetic bias an unusually strong practical effect: many senators can be shown to have been elected mainly as the result of their alphabetic advantage. Third, the electoral system underwent a change between 1982 and 1986 which could have been expected to reduce the alphabetic bias-but which instead increased its effects.
Evidence
from the Spanish
Case
Spain uses the limited vote method for the election of most of its senators. The limited vote is a semi-proportional system in which each voter has fewer votes than the number of candidates to be elected (see Lijphart et al., 1986). Most of the senatorial districts in Spain are four-member districts in which each voter can cast three votes. In addition, there are a few three-, two-, and one-member districts as well as a small number of senators who are indirectly elected by the regional legislatures. For the sake of comparability, however, we shall analyse only the 47 four-member districts which elect 188 (out of a total of 239) senators. The normal practice is for the political parties to nominate three candidates each; the few exceptions of parties nominating fewer or more than three candidates will also be excluded from our analysis, again in order to maximize comparability. The elections are clearly partisan. The candidates’ party affiliations are prominently displayed: usually, the ballot provides not only the full party name but the party acronym and the party symbol as well. And even a cursory inspection of the election results reveals that partisan preference is by far the strongest determinant of voting. For instance, in the 1982 election in Alava, the top three candidates received 49,922, 49,049, and 47,001 votes, and all three were Socialists; the next group of three, belonging to the Basque National Party, received 31,703, 31,387, and 31,029 votes; next, the three Popular Alliance candidates collected 26,810, 26,800, and 26,528 votes: and so forth. The alphabetic advantage operates within the party groups, and it is caused by voters who, instead of voting a straight party ticket, distribute their three votes over two or three parties or who do not use all three of their votes. In 1982, the ballots listed all candidates in alphabetic order. The change that was made in
AREND LIJPHART AND RAFAELLOPEZPINTOR
227
1986 was that candidates of the same party were grouped together on the ballot, but within each party group the candidates were listed alphabetically; the position of the parties on the ballot was determined by the order in which they registered their candidates. The 1986 change made it much easier for voters to cast a straight party vote, and it was mainly intended as a means of minimizing alphabetic bias. As we shall see, it had the opposite effect. We shall use two measures of alphabetic voting. For the purpose of both of these, we shall refer to a party’s candidate with the highest placement on the ballot as the A candidate, to the next highest as the B candidate, and to the least favourably placed as the C candidate. One measure simply compares the total number of votes collected by A candidates with those of the B candidates, and, similarly, the votes of the B and C candidates. The different numbers of votes received by A, B, and C candidates of the same party in a district are obviously explained in part by different degrees of personal popularity, but these can be assumed to cancel each other out in the aggregate of 370 sets of candidates in the 1982 election and 364 such sets in 1986. If alphabetic bias plays a role, A candidates should receive more votes than B candidates, who in turn should receive more votes than C candidates. Our second measure looks at the relative order in which the three candidates of a party finish. There are six possible outcomes: A-B-C (that is, A with the most votes, B next, and C with the lowest number of votes), A-C-B, B-A-C, C-A-B, B-C-A, and C-B-A. In the absence of alphabetic voting, we would expect each of these outcomes to occur about equally often: approximately one-sixth or 16.7 per cent of the time. If the alphabetic bias does occur, however, we would expect the perfectly alphabetic order A-B-C to occur most often, and the counter-alphabetic result C-B-A with the lowest frequency. The four intermediate outcomes should occur in the following descending order of frequency: A-C-B (that is, A still on top but B and C out of alphabetical order), B-A-C (A in second place, but B and C in alphabetical order), C-A-B (A still in second place, and B and C reversed), and B-C-A (A at the bottom, but B and C in alphabetical order). Another way of explaining why this should be the expected order of the intermediate outcomes is as follows: in both A-C-B and B-A-C two pairs of candidates are in alphabetical order and one pair is out of alphabetical order, but it is a less serious ‘violation’ of the alphabetical order that the two bottom candidates B and C are reversed (in A-C-B) than that the two top candidates A and B are reversed (in B-A-C); next, in both C-A-B and B-C-A one pair of candidates is in alphabetical order and two are out of alphabetical order, but here it is still a bit more ‘alphabetical’ that the top candidates A and B are in the proper order (in C-AB) than that this is the case for the lesser candidates B and C (in B-C-A). The application of both measure to the 1982 and 1986 data clearly reveals an alphabetic bias, but it also entails a surprise since the results appear to be partly contradictory. Table 1 presents the total numbers of votes received by A, B, and C candidates. In both elections, the A candidates received considerably more votes than the B candidates, who in turn were favoured by the voters over the C candidates. In accordance with the hypothesis that grouping by party would tend to decrease alphabetic voting, the advantage of the higher over the lower candidates is greater in 1982 than in 1986. In 1982, the A candidates received 3.6 per cent more votes than the B candidates, and the B candidates 3.5 per cent more than the C candidates: an average of 3.6 per cent. The corresponding figures for 1986 are 3.7 and 1.7 per cent and an average of 2.7 per cent. These percentages represent the overall tendency toward alphabetic voting: the advantage it gives to candidates with a higher place on the ballot is small but significant; it is also statistically significant at the conventional 0.05 level, and even at much lower levels, too. Table 2 provides strong confirmation of the operation of an alphabetic bias. We find the
228
A~~u~e~jc Bias in Purtiran Eechms TABLE 1. Votes received by candidates listed first, second. and third on the ballots (A. B, and C candidates) in 47 four-member districts in the Spanish Senate elections of 1982 and 1986
Advantage over next candidate (%)
Votes
%
A candidates B candidates C candidates Total
19,050,314 18,380,052 17,762.175 55.192,541
34.5 33.3 32.2 100.0
3.6 3.5 -
1986 A candidates B candidates C candidates Total
17,724,221 17.095,724 16,807,711 51.627656
34.3 33.1 32.6 100.0
3.7 1.7 -
1982
--_...
Source: Based on data supplied by the Ministry of the interior, Madrid.
perfectly alphabetic order A-B-C, in which the A candidate gets the most votes and C the fewest, in 54.9 per cent of the 370 party groups in 1982 and in 74.7 per cent of the 364 groups in 1986. These percentages are much higher than the 16.7 per cent that would occur under the assumption of no alphabetic voting, and the differences are statistically significant at the 0.05 level (and, here again, also at much lower levels). Furthermore, the percentages decrease monotonically from the perfect alphabetical order through the inter mediate sequences to the counter-alphabetical order. The only exception occurs with regard to the two least alphabetic sequences in 1986, but it is an extremely slight exception involving only a handful of cases. Comparing the 1982 and 1986 data in Tables 1 and 2 yields an apparent contradiction: in 1982 the overall alphabetic advantage is higher than in 1986 (3.6 versus 2.7 per cent), but in the former year the perfect alphabetic order occurs less frequently than in the latter (54.9 versus 74.7 per cent). The explanation is that the deviations around the average advantage were much greater in 1982 than in 1986. A simple example shows how this can happen: Assume that three A candidates respectively have 4, 3, and 2 per cent advantages
TABLE 2. Frequencies of the six possible orders in which the three candidates of the same party finished in 47 four-member districts in the Spanish Senate elections of 1982 and 1986 1982 Number of parties Perfect alphabetic order: Partial alphabetic order:
Counter-alphabetic Total
order:
A-B-C A-C-B B-A-C C-A-B B-C-A C-B-A
203 66 52 22 16
%
1986 Number of parties
54.9 17.8 14.1 5.9 4.3
272 46 23 14 4
3.0 3::
100.0
Source: Based on data supplied by the Ministry of the Interior, Madrid.
36:
% 74.7 12.6
6.3 3.8 1.1 1.4 100.0
AREND LIJPHARTAND RAFAEL LOPEZ PINTOR
229
-an average of 3 per cent-over three B candidates; all three A candidates win. But now assume that these A candidates have an 8 per cent advantage, a 3 per cent advantage, and a 2 per cent disadvantage-again an average advantage of 3 per cent-over the B candidates; now only two of the A candidates are winners and one B candidate is victorious. The wider swings in 1982 must be attributed to that year’s ballot which confronted the voters with a bewilderingly large number of candidate names-ranging from 15 to 5 l-not grouped by party and, in many cases, printed on both sides of the ballot. Grouping by party in 1986 did reduce the average alphabetic advantage somewhat but, by reducing the swings around the average even more, it actually increased the frequency of alphabetic outcomes-and it is the last factor that really counts. How much did the alphabetic bias affect the actual election of senators? In most districts, the four winners were three candidates of one party and one candidate belonging to the next strongest party. In the other districts, two large parties were closely matched and each saw two of its candidates elected.2 The alphabetic bias obviously does not have practical consequences when all three of a party’s candidates are elected-only when one or two are elected. In 1982, there were 58 seats where alphabetic advantage mattered, and of the 58 candidates in the advantaged positions, 44 actually won. By pure chance, in the absence of alphabetic bias, only 24 would have won: this means that 20 senators owed their election to their alphabetic good fortune. The corresponding figures for 1986 are: 37 of the 49 candidates in advantaged positions won, whereas only 17.67 would have won by pure chance, so that here at least 19 senators were elected as a result of alphabetic luck.3 It is interesting to note that the roughly 3 per cent alphabetic bias in voting was magnified into the alphabetic election of about 10 per cent of the senators (20 and 19 out of the 188 senators in the 47 four-member districts). Conclusion There are a number of special reasons why the alphabetic bias is such an important factor in Spanish Senate elections. One is that the Senate is the less important chamber of Spain’s bicameral legislature and hence that Senate elections do not generate the same interest as the election of the Congress (lower house). Moreover, since the Senate and Congress are elected simultaneously, some voters participate in Senate elections who might otherwise have abstained; the effect is similar in kind to that of compulsory voting but, of course, not at all to the same extent. In addition, many voters do not understand the limited vote system, and in 1982 the ballot was long and complex. The main reason why, in the Spanish case, the practical effect of alphabetic voting is so great, is the limited vote system. If the 47 four-member limited vote districts had instead been three-member plurality districts-assuming that the voters would have cast the same votes-the alphabetic bias would have made a difference in only those few cases where the two strongest parties were of almost equal strength: four districts in 1982 and merely one in 1986. Lack of interest and knowledge may be a special problem when a relatively unimportant assembly is elected, such as the Senate in Spain, or under conditions of compulsory voting, as in Australia, but it is extremely implausible to assume that this factor is reduced to zero in higher-salience elections in single-member districts with a simple ballot and without compulsory voting-the kind of elections analysed by Darcy (1986) and by Kelley and McAllister (1984). Some degree of ignorance and confusion-and, consequently, alphabetic or positional bias-must occur among at least some voters. The mistake that Darcy, Kelley, and McAllister make is to argue that, because alphabetic bias is not statis-
230
Af~babet~ Bias in Partisan Efections
tically significant, it definitely does not exist. Their conclusion potentially entails what statisticians call a Type II error-the error of accepting the null hypothesis that no relationship exists while a weak relationship does in fact exist. Since the alphabetic bias is admittedly a weak force, even under circumstances that favour it, it is inherently difficult to prove statistically. In our own case of the Spanish Senate elections, the relatively small advantages that higher candidates have over lower ones-ranging from 1.7 to 3.7 per cent-cannot be attributed to chance only because of the very large numbers of votes in which these small differences occur. We agree with G. J. G. Upton and D. Brook (1974: 189) who find no statistically significant alphabetic voting in British parliamentary elections once party is controlled, but who nevertheless conclude: ‘it would be surprising . . . if such biases were totally absent. We do not believe that this is the case.’ Similarly, the problem of positional bias potentially exists when voters do not pick individual candidates but choose among a relatively large number of political parties as in some PR systems with ‘closed’ lists. And it exists for both parties and in~vidual candidates in list PR systems where the voter can also make an intra-party choice (see Katz, 1936). In all these cases, we contend, the crucial question is the extent, not the existence. of a positional bias. What are the practical consequences of this conclusion? When the alphabetic or positional bias is relatively strong, electoral fairness points to the rotation of candidates and/or party lists on the ballot. In the clearest instances of bias, more drastic solutions may also be considered; for instance, compulsory voting and the limited vote system, which both encourage alphabetic voting and which are shunned by most democracies, should perhaps be abolished. In milder cases of bias-especially when it is so small that it cannot be detected unambiguously-the decision to use measures like ballot rotation should depend on how strictly one applies the standards of democratic impartiality and on the costs and inconvenience of ballot rotation. It may also well be argued that ballot rotation is not always a clear democratic requirement; for instance, in list PR systems, it makes sense to give parties the right to present their lists of candidates in the order that they determine themselves. Our aim, however, is not to prescribe solutions. The only practical advice that we want to give is that decisions with regard to alphabetic voting should be based on the above kinds of considerations-not on the incorrect assumption that, in partisan elections, alphabetic voting does not exist.
Notes 1. Seealso the extensive references to the earlier literature on alphabetic voting cited in Darcy (1986: 661-2) and in Kelley and McAllister (1984: 465-6). 2. In addition, one district (Soria in 1982) elected one independent, two members of one party, and one of another party. And in one district (Seville in 1986), a B candidate received the fourth largest number of votes but lost a legal challenge. and the A candidate of the same party was instead declared elected; we omitted this case from our ana!ysis. 3. The probabilities of election on the assumption of no alphabetic voting were calculated as follows: of the 58 candidates in alpha~ti~Iy favourable positions in 198244 had a one-third probability of being elected by pure chance (in situations where one candidate was elected out of a slate of three), and 14 had a two-thirds probability of being elected by pure chance (in situations where two candidates out of three were elected): 44 X 113 + 14 X 2/3 = 24. In 1986, there were 49 candidates in alphabetically favourable positions; 45 of these had a one-third and 4 a two-thirds probability of being elected by pure chance: 45 X l/3 + 4 X 213 = 17.67.
AREND LIJPHARTAND RAFAEL LOPEZ PINTOR
231
References R. Darcy, ‘Position Effects with Party Column Ballots’, Western Political Quurteriy, 39:4, December 1986, pp. 648-62. Richard S. Katz, ‘Irmaparty Preference Voting’, in: Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart (editors), Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences, (New York: Agathon Press, 1986). Jonathan Kelley and Ian McAllister, ‘Ballot Paper Cues and the Vote in Australia and Britain: 48:2, Summer 1984, Alphabetic Voting, Sex, and Title’, Public Opinion Quurterb, pp: 452-66. Arend Lijphart, Rafael Lopez Pintor and Yasunori Sone, ‘The Limited Vote and the Single Nontransferable Vote: Lessons from the Japanese and Spanish Examples’, in: Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart (editors), ElectoralLaws and Their Political Consequences, (New York: Agathon Press, 1986). G. J. G. Upton and D. Brook, ‘The Importance of Positional Voting Bias in British Elections’, Political Studies, 22~2, June 1974, pp. 178-90.
Alphabetic Bias in Partisan Elections: Patterns of Voting for the Spanish Senate, 1982 and 1986 AREND LIJPHART University of California, San Diego, Lo Jolla, CA 92093,
USA
RAFAEL UPEZ PINTOR Universidad Autonoma,
Madrid, Spain
Recent research has suggested that, in partisan elections, candidates derive no special advantage from being placed first or as high as possible on the ballot, and that, consequently, measures to neutralize this alphabetic or positional hias are unnecessary. We warn against these conclusions, and analyse one case of particularly clear alphabetic voting: the 1982 and 1986 Senate elections in Spain. The aggregate alphabetic advantage that candidates enjoyed over their party’s next lower candidates on the hallot ranged from 1.7 to 3.7 per cent. And, in both elections, more than 10 per cent of the 188 senators elected in four-member districts can he shown to have heen elected as a result of their alphabetic advantage.
The phenomenon high as possible
of positional
bias-that
on the ballot-has
it is to a candidate’s
been known
advantage
to be first or as
for a long time; since candidates
are usually
bias. In Robert Darcy’s (1986: 648) words, the positional or alphabetic bias is ‘part of the folklore of politics’. However, two recent studies have cast grave doubts on the existence of this bias in partisan elections. In primary elections (where voters choose candidates within parties) and in non-partisan general elections, there may be a significant advantage to being listed on the top of the ballot, but when voting entails a partisan choice, the party cue is said to be sufficiently strong to negate alphabetic voting. Darcy (1986: 649) found ‘no evidence that there is ballot position advantage in general elections ’ in the United States. listed alphabetically,
this advantage
may also be called the alphabetic
226
A~~~a~et~ Bias in Partisan Elections
all elections in the world’s democracies are partisan-primaries and non-partisan elections are almost exclusively American institutions-and compulsory voting is quite rare. Hence it seems safe to assume that, with the exception of the United States and a handful of compulsory voting countries, there is no alphabetic bias at all. This conclusion also has a practical aspect; if there is no alphabetic bias, there is no need to take any measures to counter its effects, such as rotating the candidates’ names on the ballots. Since ballot rotation adds to the cost and complexity of conducting elections, the conclusion that it is unnecessary would be a happy one. In this note, we want to warn against accepting the above conclusions as generally valid. We shall first discuss one case--the election of the Senate (the upper house of the legislature) in Spain in 1982 and 1986-which shows clear and strong evidence of alphabetic voting in a partisan election. Secondly, we shall suggest how the general conclusions proposed by Darcy, Kelley, and McAllister should be modified. The focus should be on the degree of alphabetic bias in different circumstances instead of on the question of its absence or presence. We shall argue that the available evidence permits only one conclusion: alphabetic voting is never a strong force-it ranges from extremely weak to moderately weak-but it does appear to be a universal and tenacious phenomenon. Senate elections in Spain are especially interesting in this respect for three reasons. First, as already indicated, the alphabetic bias manifests itself in unusually clear form. Second, the electoral system used for senatorial elections, to be described shortly, gives the alphabetic bias an unusually strong practical effect: many senators can be shown to have been elected mainly as the result of their alphabetic advantage. Third, the electoral system underwent a change between 1982 and 1986 which could have been expected to reduce the alphabetic bias-but which instead increased its effects.
Evidence
from the Spanish
Case
Spain uses the limited vote method for the election of most of its senators. The limited vote is a semi-proportional system in which each voter has fewer votes than the number of candidates to be elected (see Lijphart et al., 1986). Most of the senatorial districts in Spain are four-member districts in which each voter can cast three votes. In addition, there are a few three-, two-, and one-member districts as well as a small number of senators who are indirectly elected by the regional legislatures. For the sake of comparability, however, we shall analyse only the 47 four-member districts which elect 188 (out of a total of 239) senators. The normal practice is for the political parties to nominate three candidates each; the few exceptions of parties nominating fewer or more than three candidates will also be excluded from our analysis, again in order to maximize comparability. The elections are clearly partisan. The candidates’ party affiliations are prominently displayed: usually, the ballot provides not only the full party name but the party acronym and the party symbol as well. And even a cursory inspection of the election results reveals that partisan preference is by far the strongest determinant of voting. For instance, in the 1982 election in Alava, the top three candidates received 49,922, 49,049, and 47,001 votes, and all three were Socialists; the next group of three, belonging to the Basque National Party, received 31,703, 31,387, and 31,029 votes; next, the three Popular Alliance candidates collected 26,810, 26,800, and 26,528 votes: and so forth. The alphabetic advantage operates within the party groups, and it is caused by voters who, instead of voting a straight party ticket, distribute their three votes over two or three parties or who do not use all three of their votes. In 1982, the ballots listed all candidates in alphabetic order. The change that was made in
AREND LIJPHART AND RAFAELLOPEZPINTOR
227
1986 was that candidates of the same party were grouped together on the ballot, but within each party group the candidates were listed alphabetically; the position of the parties on the ballot was determined by the order in which they registered their candidates. The 1986 change made it much easier for voters to cast a straight party vote, and it was mainly intended as a means of minimizing alphabetic bias. As we shall see, it had the opposite effect. We shall use two measures of alphabetic voting. For the purpose of both of these, we shall refer to a party’s candidate with the highest placement on the ballot as the A candidate, to the next highest as the B candidate, and to the least favourably placed as the C candidate. One measure simply compares the total number of votes collected by A candidates with those of the B candidates, and, similarly, the votes of the B and C candidates. The different numbers of votes received by A, B, and C candidates of the same party in a district are obviously explained in part by different degrees of personal popularity, but these can be assumed to cancel each other out in the aggregate of 370 sets of candidates in the 1982 election and 364 such sets in 1986. If alphabetic bias plays a role, A candidates should receive more votes than B candidates, who in turn should receive more votes than C candidates. Our second measure looks at the relative order in which the three candidates of a party finish. There are six possible outcomes: A-B-C (that is, A with the most votes, B next, and C with the lowest number of votes), A-C-B, B-A-C, C-A-B, B-C-A, and C-B-A. In the absence of alphabetic voting, we would expect each of these outcomes to occur about equally often: approximately one-sixth or 16.7 per cent of the time. If the alphabetic bias does occur, however, we would expect the perfectly alphabetic order A-B-C to occur most often, and the counter-alphabetic result C-B-A with the lowest frequency. The four intermediate outcomes should occur in the following descending order of frequency: A-C-B (that is, A still on top but B and C out of alphabetical order), B-A-C (A in second place, but B and C in alphabetical order), C-A-B (A still in second place, and B and C reversed), and B-C-A (A at the bottom, but B and C in alphabetical order). Another way of explaining why this should be the expected order of the intermediate outcomes is as follows: in both A-C-B and B-A-C two pairs of candidates are in alphabetical order and one pair is out of alphabetical order, but it is a less serious ‘violation’ of the alphabetical order that the two bottom candidates B and C are reversed (in A-C-B) than that the two top candidates A and B are reversed (in B-A-C); next, in both C-A-B and B-C-A one pair of candidates is in alphabetical order and two are out of alphabetical order, but here it is still a bit more ‘alphabetical’ that the top candidates A and B are in the proper order (in C-AB) than that this is the case for the lesser candidates B and C (in B-C-A). The application of both measure to the 1982 and 1986 data clearly reveals an alphabetic bias, but it also entails a surprise since the results appear to be partly contradictory. Table 1 presents the total numbers of votes received by A, B, and C candidates. In both elections, the A candidates received considerably more votes than the B candidates, who in turn were favoured by the voters over the C candidates. In accordance with the hypothesis that grouping by party would tend to decrease alphabetic voting, the advantage of the higher over the lower candidates is greater in 1982 than in 1986. In 1982, the A candidates received 3.6 per cent more votes than the B candidates, and the B candidates 3.5 per cent more than the C candidates: an average of 3.6 per cent. The corresponding figures for 1986 are 3.7 and 1.7 per cent and an average of 2.7 per cent. These percentages represent the overall tendency toward alphabetic voting: the advantage it gives to candidates with a higher place on the ballot is small but significant; it is also statistically significant at the conventional 0.05 level, and even at much lower levels, too. Table 2 provides strong confirmation of the operation of an alphabetic bias. We find the
228
A~~u~e~jc Bias in Purtiran Eechms TABLE 1. Votes received by candidates listed first, second. and third on the ballots (A. B, and C candidates) in 47 four-member districts in the Spanish Senate elections of 1982 and 1986
Advantage over next candidate (%)
Votes
%
A candidates B candidates C candidates Total
19,050,314 18,380,052 17,762.175 55.192,541
34.5 33.3 32.2 100.0
3.6 3.5 -
1986 A candidates B candidates C candidates Total
17,724,221 17.095,724 16,807,711 51.627656
34.3 33.1 32.6 100.0
3.7 1.7 -
1982
--_...
Source: Based on data supplied by the Ministry of the interior, Madrid.
perfectly alphabetic order A-B-C, in which the A candidate gets the most votes and C the fewest, in 54.9 per cent of the 370 party groups in 1982 and in 74.7 per cent of the 364 groups in 1986. These percentages are much higher than the 16.7 per cent that would occur under the assumption of no alphabetic voting, and the differences are statistically significant at the 0.05 level (and, here again, also at much lower levels). Furthermore, the percentages decrease monotonically from the perfect alphabetical order through the inter mediate sequences to the counter-alphabetical order. The only exception occurs with regard to the two least alphabetic sequences in 1986, but it is an extremely slight exception involving only a handful of cases. Comparing the 1982 and 1986 data in Tables 1 and 2 yields an apparent contradiction: in 1982 the overall alphabetic advantage is higher than in 1986 (3.6 versus 2.7 per cent), but in the former year the perfect alphabetic order occurs less frequently than in the latter (54.9 versus 74.7 per cent). The explanation is that the deviations around the average advantage were much greater in 1982 than in 1986. A simple example shows how this can happen: Assume that three A candidates respectively have 4, 3, and 2 per cent advantages
TABLE 2. Frequencies of the six possible orders in which the three candidates of the same party finished in 47 four-member districts in the Spanish Senate elections of 1982 and 1986 1982 Number of parties Perfect alphabetic order: Partial alphabetic order:
Counter-alphabetic Total
order:
A-B-C A-C-B B-A-C C-A-B B-C-A C-B-A
203 66 52 22 16
%
1986 Number of parties
54.9 17.8 14.1 5.9 4.3
272 46 23 14 4
3.0 3::
100.0
Source: Based on data supplied by the Ministry of the Interior, Madrid.
36:
% 74.7 12.6
6.3 3.8 1.1 1.4 100.0
AREND LIJPHARTAND RAFAEL LOPEZ PINTOR
229
-an average of 3 per cent-over three B candidates; all three A candidates win. But now assume that these A candidates have an 8 per cent advantage, a 3 per cent advantage, and a 2 per cent disadvantage-again an average advantage of 3 per cent-over the B candidates; now only two of the A candidates are winners and one B candidate is victorious. The wider swings in 1982 must be attributed to that year’s ballot which confronted the voters with a bewilderingly large number of candidate names-ranging from 15 to 5 l-not grouped by party and, in many cases, printed on both sides of the ballot. Grouping by party in 1986 did reduce the average alphabetic advantage somewhat but, by reducing the swings around the average even more, it actually increased the frequency of alphabetic outcomes-and it is the last factor that really counts. How much did the alphabetic bias affect the actual election of senators? In most districts, the four winners were three candidates of one party and one candidate belonging to the next strongest party. In the other districts, two large parties were closely matched and each saw two of its candidates elected.2 The alphabetic bias obviously does not have practical consequences when all three of a party’s candidates are elected-only when one or two are elected. In 1982, there were 58 seats where alphabetic advantage mattered, and of the 58 candidates in the advantaged positions, 44 actually won. By pure chance, in the absence of alphabetic bias, only 24 would have won: this means that 20 senators owed their election to their alphabetic good fortune. The corresponding figures for 1986 are: 37 of the 49 candidates in advantaged positions won, whereas only 17.67 would have won by pure chance, so that here at least 19 senators were elected as a result of alphabetic luck.3 It is interesting to note that the roughly 3 per cent alphabetic bias in voting was magnified into the alphabetic election of about 10 per cent of the senators (20 and 19 out of the 188 senators in the 47 four-member districts). Conclusion There are a number of special reasons why the alphabetic bias is such an important factor in Spanish Senate elections. One is that the Senate is the less important chamber of Spain’s bicameral legislature and hence that Senate elections do not generate the same interest as the election of the Congress (lower house). Moreover, since the Senate and Congress are elected simultaneously, some voters participate in Senate elections who might otherwise have abstained; the effect is similar in kind to that of compulsory voting but, of course, not at all to the same extent. In addition, many voters do not understand the limited vote system, and in 1982 the ballot was long and complex. The main reason why, in the Spanish case, the practical effect of alphabetic voting is so great, is the limited vote system. If the 47 four-member limited vote districts had instead been three-member plurality districts-assuming that the voters would have cast the same votes-the alphabetic bias would have made a difference in only those few cases where the two strongest parties were of almost equal strength: four districts in 1982 and merely one in 1986. Lack of interest and knowledge may be a special problem when a relatively unimportant assembly is elected, such as the Senate in Spain, or under conditions of compulsory voting, as in Australia, but it is extremely implausible to assume that this factor is reduced to zero in higher-salience elections in single-member districts with a simple ballot and without compulsory voting-the kind of elections analysed by Darcy (1986) and by Kelley and McAllister (1984). Some degree of ignorance and confusion-and, consequently, alphabetic or positional bias-must occur among at least some voters. The mistake that Darcy, Kelley, and McAllister make is to argue that, because alphabetic bias is not statis-
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tically significant, it definitely does not exist. Their conclusion potentially entails what statisticians call a Type II error-the error of accepting the null hypothesis that no relationship exists while a weak relationship does in fact exist. Since the alphabetic bias is admittedly a weak force, even under circumstances that favour it, it is inherently difficult to prove statistically. In our own case of the Spanish Senate elections, the relatively small advantages that higher candidates have over lower ones-ranging from 1.7 to 3.7 per cent-cannot be attributed to chance only because of the very large numbers of votes in which these small differences occur. We agree with G. J. G. Upton and D. Brook (1974: 189) who find no statistically significant alphabetic voting in British parliamentary elections once party is controlled, but who nevertheless conclude: ‘it would be surprising . . . if such biases were totally absent. We do not believe that this is the case.’ Similarly, the problem of positional bias potentially exists when voters do not pick individual candidates but choose among a relatively large number of political parties as in some PR systems with ‘closed’ lists. And it exists for both parties and in~vidual candidates in list PR systems where the voter can also make an intra-party choice (see Katz, 1936). In all these cases, we contend, the crucial question is the extent, not the existence. of a positional bias. What are the practical consequences of this conclusion? When the alphabetic or positional bias is relatively strong, electoral fairness points to the rotation of candidates and/or party lists on the ballot. In the clearest instances of bias, more drastic solutions may also be considered; for instance, compulsory voting and the limited vote system, which both encourage alphabetic voting and which are shunned by most democracies, should perhaps be abolished. In milder cases of bias-especially when it is so small that it cannot be detected unambiguously-the decision to use measures like ballot rotation should depend on how strictly one applies the standards of democratic impartiality and on the costs and inconvenience of ballot rotation. It may also well be argued that ballot rotation is not always a clear democratic requirement; for instance, in list PR systems, it makes sense to give parties the right to present their lists of candidates in the order that they determine themselves. Our aim, however, is not to prescribe solutions. The only practical advice that we want to give is that decisions with regard to alphabetic voting should be based on the above kinds of considerations-not on the incorrect assumption that, in partisan elections, alphabetic voting does not exist.
Notes 1. Seealso the extensive references to the earlier literature on alphabetic voting cited in Darcy (1986: 661-2) and in Kelley and McAllister (1984: 465-6). 2. In addition, one district (Soria in 1982) elected one independent, two members of one party, and one of another party. And in one district (Seville in 1986), a B candidate received the fourth largest number of votes but lost a legal challenge. and the A candidate of the same party was instead declared elected; we omitted this case from our ana!ysis. 3. The probabilities of election on the assumption of no alphabetic voting were calculated as follows: of the 58 candidates in alpha~ti~Iy favourable positions in 198244 had a one-third probability of being elected by pure chance (in situations where one candidate was elected out of a slate of three), and 14 had a two-thirds probability of being elected by pure chance (in situations where two candidates out of three were elected): 44 X 113 + 14 X 2/3 = 24. In 1986, there were 49 candidates in alphabetically favourable positions; 45 of these had a one-third and 4 a two-thirds probability of being elected by pure chance: 45 X l/3 + 4 X 213 = 17.67.
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References R. Darcy, ‘Position Effects with Party Column Ballots’, Western Political Quurteriy, 39:4, December 1986, pp. 648-62. Richard S. Katz, ‘Irmaparty Preference Voting’, in: Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart (editors), Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences, (New York: Agathon Press, 1986). Jonathan Kelley and Ian McAllister, ‘Ballot Paper Cues and the Vote in Australia and Britain: 48:2, Summer 1984, Alphabetic Voting, Sex, and Title’, Public Opinion Quurterb, pp: 452-66. Arend Lijphart, Rafael Lopez Pintor and Yasunori Sone, ‘The Limited Vote and the Single Nontransferable Vote: Lessons from the Japanese and Spanish Examples’, in: Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart (editors), ElectoralLaws and Their Political Consequences, (New York: Agathon Press, 1986). G. J. G. Upton and D. Brook, ‘The Importance of Positional Voting Bias in British Elections’, Political Studies, 22~2, June 1974, pp. 178-90.