90004780

open access

Accepted Manuscript

Running Multiple Candidates, Dividing the Vote Under the Single Nontransferable Vote System: Evidence From Japan's Upper House Elections

English (英語)

Asian Politics & Policy

9(3)

402-426

Wiley

2017-07

2019-08-01

Political parties seek to make optimal nominations of candidates to maximize the number of seats they may win. In a multi-member district with a single non-transferable vote (SNTV) electoral system, parties need to run the optimal number of candidates in each electoral district. If too many or too few candidates are run, they may lose seats they might otherwise have won. In this situation, district-level party organizations face a collective action problem: they do not have the incentive to run multiple candidates for fear of losing all seats, despite needing to do so in order for the party to win a majority of seats in a legislature. This study examines the factors that enable parties to run multiple candidates in SNTV districts, and shows that parties undertake this action when they are able to divide the vote between party candidates on the basis of geography in the case of Japan.

single non-transferable vote (SNTV)

学術雑誌論文

© 2017 Policy Studies Organization. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [Asian Politics & Policy, 9(3):402-426, 2017], which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aspp.12331. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.