From Nowhere: The Electoral Performance of New Political Parties in Local Politics

The electoral breakthrough and persistence of new political parties has been intensely investigated in the last two decades. Most studies sought to understand why some newly formed political parties gained seats in the national parliaments or were invited to join coalition government, while others had an episodic presence on the political scene. However, there are very few studies that investigated the electoral performance of newly formed parties at the local level. Understanding the dynamic of new parties in local politics is important because this is the level at which citizens are less disconnected from politics – compared to the national level – and behaviour in local elections can predict future behaviour in national politics. This paper addresses this gap in the literature and aims to explain why some newly formed political parties gain seats in the local councils, while others fail to do so. The analysis focuses on Romania, as a representative case for many newly formed parties that fields candidates in local elections, and compares the electoral results of new parties in 319 cities in the 2020 and 2024 local elections. The paper tests empirically several institutional and behavioural explanations related to the electoral competition at city level (number of competitors, electoral stability of the established parties in previous elections, patterns of local coalition government, convergence between local and national level incumbents) and to the community characteristics (population and local council size, voter turnout, and the existence of political scandals between elections).