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Show 128 could not have had sort of very high hopes for winning individual seats. We are running on an independent platform. We would still have had to concentrate on party tickets, so on the vote, and that basically requires roughly the same strategy. (2014) In looking at results of the 2010 election versus the 2014 election, LMP did lose both in terms of seats, a foregone conclusion under the changes, but also a small decrease in percent of vote as well. The party went from 7.5 percent of the vote in 2010 (and 16 seats) to 5.3 percent of the vote (and 5 seats), so perhaps the changing institutional rules had more of an impact than LMP expected. Another finding of note is that niche parties who join and compete in elections as part of an electoral alliance are not doing themselves any favors, contrary to H21. Niche parties who participate in electoral alliances are expected to receive about seven fewer seats, and this was clear across both FE and RE models. It seems that niche parties may get lost in the shadows of the other members of the electoral alliance and thus result in fewer seats after an election. From the strategic results described here and for the percent of vote dependent variable, if a mainstream party was looking to curtail or temper niche party success, some of the most effective methods would be to offer the niche party an avenue of cooperation like joining an electoral alliance or governing coalition. These both had negative impacts on the electoral fortunes of niche parties. The next finding to mention is the apparent difference between newer and older EU member states. New member states, primarily from Central and Eastern European states who joined in 2004 or later, see niche parties receive about nine fewer seats. This could be due to age differences in the niche parties in these countries. Niche parties, and all political parties, were not able to compete in elections in much of Central and Eastern Europe until the collapse of the Soviet Union, and even then, many countries have only |
