Ballot Position Effects in Finnish Parliamentary Elections

There is abundant research on how the order of candidate names on the ballot causes bias in election outcomes. This study expands our understanding of ballot position effects by focusing on an electoral system with intraparty preference voting and where most parties list their district candidates in strict alphabetical order on the ballot. In Finland, the information and cognitive demands placed on the voters are high because they not only choose a party, but are also obliged to choose one candidate from that party list, which often consists of a large number of candidates. Our analysis of six parliamentary elections in Finland 1995–2015 confirms the hypothesis of a curvilinear non-monotonic relationship between a candidate’s position on an alphabetical list and his or her share of preference votes, while controlling for a host of other influential variables. Thus, the number of preference votes declines monotonically as one moves away from the top position of the list. In addition, candidates who appear in the end of an alphabetical list receive somewhat more votes than those who appear in the middle of a list.