The South African general elections of April 2009 were the most momentous and important since the 'miracle' elections for a democratic parliament in 1994. Not only did they bring Jacob Zuma to the presidency of the country but threw up significant challenges to the ruling party from the breakaway Congress of the People (COPE), as well as from the Democratic Alliance (DA), which won an outright majority in the Western Cape.

Thesis (M.A. (Political and International Studies))--Rhodes University, 2005. / A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Political Studies.

Recent election campaigns generated extensive attention for their creative use of Internet, from President Obama’s 2008 Facebook tactic of allowing Facebook friends to share their support with each other to tools that allow supporters to mobilize and influence offline. This thesis asks whether Internet access alone can influence an individual to vote, within the context of American Presidential elections. First, I replicate similar literature by conducting a series of Linear Probability Models that indicate that Internet does have a significant impact on an individual’s decision to vote. However, one major issue that previous studies fail to address is the likelihood of endogeneity between self-reported Internet access and voting behavior. To address this, I introduce a measure of Internet Service Providers available in a given Congressional District as an instrumental variable. Once instrumented, it appears that Internet is largely insignificant. However, there is a key exception in 2008, where Internet access is significant. I argue that this is due to the developments in social media technology that revolutionized the ways in which candidates engaged with voters and voters engaged with one another.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 112-124).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Political Science Department. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis deals with the success of the two newly formed parties ANO 2011 and Úsvit přímé demokracie Tomia Okamury in the elections to the House of Commons in the Czech Republic in 2013. These two parties gained a substantial percentage of votes and became part of the government despite the fact, that they were established shortly before the elections. In the theoretical part of this thesis, the formation and success of new parties abroad and in the Czech Republic is analysed. The main focus are the voters voting these parties, so there is an extended part dealing with voting behavior in the Czech Republic. Secondary analysis is the research method used in this thesis; its advantages are discussed in the methodological part. Secondary analysis of multiple high quality data sets is used to compare the voters of the new parties and the voters of other established parties. It turns out there are significant differences between these two groups in the areas of sociodemography, political views and experiences and even outlooks on life. The trend of new parties, which started already in the 2010 elections, is obviously continuing and it seems that it is even broadening.

The objective of the Ph.D. thesis "Analysis of the Elections and Electoral Behaviour to the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic" is an analysis of Senate elections on a micro- level of districts in regular terms from 1996 to 2012, including by-elections. Data file comprises a total of 2153 candidates and their election results at the municipal level aggregated to five defined categories by number of registered voters. Analysis is mainly focused on the differences in electoral support for candidates in municipalities up to 999 voters, in municipalities between 1000 and 4999 voters, in municipalities between 5000 to 9999 voters, in municipalities over 10 000 voters and finally in districts covering territory of the four largest cities in the Czech Republic (the Capital City of Prague and cities Brno, Ostrava and Pilsen). In the theoretical part, the Ph.D. thesis presents the Senat as the second house of Parliament of the Czech Republic and deals with the majority run-off system. A quantitative research of Senate elections is performed in the analytical part, where electoral success of candidates conditioned by their political parties, socio-economic and political circumstances in districts and individual profile of candidates is examined. The analysis describes differences among...