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Abstract
Through a study of local party adaptation to the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in the 2007 Scottish local government election, this article asks whether party organisations can be strategic, vote‐maximising actors when a new electoral system is introduced. By examining candidate and ‘vote management’ strategies, the article demonstrates that local parties tended to adapt best in areas of organisational and electoral strength. However, despite some comprehensive attempts to adapt to the STV system, parties were hampered by a lack of experience with the new system and a lack of adequate data upon which to base candidate and campaigning decisions.
Notes
1. This article draws on research conducted under Nuffield Foundation Small Grant SGS/34103 ‘Political Parties and Multi‐Level Local Campaigning in the 2007 Scottish elections’. Alistair Clark would like to gratefully acknowledge this support.
2. More popularly known as the Kerley Commission. Three members of the working group filed a minority report dissenting from this conclusion.
3. In Northern Ireland, for example, council wards return between five and seven councillors, while the Northern Ireland Assembly has six members per constituency (www.ark.ac.uk/elections [accessed 8 April 2008]).
4. These figures include the Islands councils of Shetland, Orkney and Eilean Sair (Western Isles).
5. For Irish examples of such campaign literature, see Gallagher and Marsh (Citation2008: xix–xxxix).
6. Chalmers was elected at stage 5, while the other two candidates were elected at the end of the count process having not achieved quota.
7. We are grateful to Alex Smith for this observation.
8. Fourteen interviews were carried out with agents and party election officers across the four main parties as part of this research.
9. Although one contributor to the Liberal Democrats' advice booklet, Iain Smith MSP, suggested that Liberal Democrat local parties should not campaign for second preferences in case it compromised local parties efforts to attract first preferences by confusing voters about what the party was asking them to do (Scottish Liberal Democrats Citation2006).