Beyond First- and Second-Order? Political Parties approaches to Elections

Basic understandings of political parties contain an assumption that they wish to gain political power, achieved in democratic societies through winning elections. However what is less well understood is the different levels of salience political parties’ offer to different elections. This is important, and linked to notions of turnout, in democratic societies as political parties offer voters choices and encourage the public to turn out and vote. Much of the academic literature distinguishes between first- and second-order elections and in doing so assumes that political parties homogeneously offer greater levels of salience to national elections. I seek to offer two challenges to such assumptions by drawing upon a range of British elections. Firstly I argue that the current devolution settlement means that some, regional, political parties may have more interest in winning regional (second-order) elections than national (first-order) elections. The geographical appeal (and limitations) of parties such as the Scottish Nationalist Party mean they have little chance of ‘winning’ (defined as obtaining >50% of seats) national elections. Therefore the party may offer higher levels of salience to Scottish Parliamentary elections – elections whereby the party is able to contest 100% of seats. My second critique is linked to this and acknowledges that different political parties could simultaneously view a particular election differently. For example some smaller parties contest certain elections to gain publicity and offer a different rationale for standing than mainstream political parties. This paper draws upon party spending returns and media reports of elections to develop these criticisms and demonstrate the importance of electoral calculations in understanding political party’s motivations at times of elections. Such understandings could lead to important insights into political participation and solutions to readdress the problem(s) of declining turnout – something which various electorates (but importantly not political parties) have hitherto been blamed for.