EXPLORING UNCHARTED TERRITORY:

THE IRISH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 1997

by

Wouter van der Brug

Cees van der Eijk

both: Department of Political Science, and The

Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)

University of Amsterdam

and

Michael Marsh

Department of Political Science

Trinity College

Dublin

Submitted to BJPS January 1999

Final version delivered: October 1999.

1

Abstract

Elections to the Irish Presidency belong to the category of those in which

hardly any political power is involved. In elections such as this one,

according to second-order election theory, voter behaviour reflects mainly

preferences in the first-order political arena, where actual policy is made.

This theory fails, however, to explain voter preferences in the 1997 Irish

presidential elections. An alternative perspective of a popularity contest,

suggesting that voters’ preferences are largely unconnected to their

political opinions, and generally idiosyncratic in nature, also fails to fit the

evidence. Nevertheless, the information, framing and priming that voters

were subjected to during the 1997 campaign are shown here to result in

the development of a significant unidimensional cognitive and

preferential ordering of the candidates.

Introduction

The comparative study of electoral behaviour has demonstrated that our

understanding of particular elections —even the most important and familiar ones—

is enriched by the search for a general theory of electoral choice that encompasses the

many different forms and contexts in which elections take place. Elections in which

there is little ‘at stake’ are often incorrectly considered as poor subjects for study.

But the study of such elections gave rise to an important body of theoretical and

empirical literature about second-order elections, which has greatly influenced our

understanding of first-order elections where much more is at stake in political

terms.1 This paper extends this body of work by analyzing Irish voters’ preferences

for the candidates running in the October 30, 1997 Irish presidential election.

2

Unfortunately, the amount of relevant empirical information about elections is

strongly related to their political significance. Occasionally, however, we find that an

‘unimportant’ election has been well observed. One such case was this presidential

election. The data at our disposal not only relate to the final choice, but span

virtually the entire campaign period, allowing us not only to investigate the

preferences as expressed on the ballot, but also their development during the

previous weeks.

The 1997 presidential election

The Irish presidency is unusual in many ways.2 Though the post carries few

usable powers, it is filled by direct election. Elections are actually infrequent,

with several presidents returned unopposed.3 Nominations are quite tightly

controlled, candidates requiring the support of 20 members of the Oireachtas

(the two chambers of parliament), or of four county or county borough councils,

although this second channel had never been used prior to 1997. Five

candidates were nominated, more than ever before (beating the three who stood

in 1945 and 1990). More remarkably four were women, and none of them fitted

the typical profile of being a senior member of the Dáil (lower house of

parliament). The candidates were: Adi Roche (nominated by Labour, also

supported by Democratic Left (DL) and the Green Party), Mary Banotti (Fine

Gael (FG)) and Mary McAleese (nominated by Fianna Fáil (FF) and also

supported by the Progressive Democrats) along with Rosemary Scallon and

Derek Nally. These last two were independents who obtained local council

nominations. Only Banotti, an MEP, was a practising politician. McAleese was a

3

Northern Ireland academic who had strong links to FF and stood as their

candidate for the Dáil in a general election in 1987, but Roche, an anti-nuclear

campaigner who ran a charity in aid of the children of Chernobyl, had no links

with Labour at all. 4 Derek Nally was a former policeman who ran a victims’

charity. Rosemary Scallon (stage name Dana) was a one-time winner of the

Eurovision Song Contest, who was working for a catholic TV station in the

USA.

INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE

The campaign was most remarkable for seeing the decline of Roche, who looked

like the eventual winner in the first poll but who finished a very poor fourth less

than six weeks later (see Figure 1). Seen by Labour strategists as a campaigning

president, her campaign failed to strike a chord. After a poor start, when several

people once involved in her charity made public criticisms of her leadership

style, her support declined. Her organisation appeared amateurish, the parties

supporting her failed to mobilize their activists, and her campaign failed to

promote her as a credible president. McAleese, the other initial front runner,

also ran into difficulties but used them to her advantage. Confidential briefing

documents were leaked from the Department of Foreign Affairs which

appeared to brand her as being much too close to Sinn Féin (SF), and she also

received the personal endorsement of the SF president, Gerry Adams5. This

episode lasted over a week in which attention focused very much on McAleese

whose performance under the spotlight demonstrated considerable aplomb

under pressure, and also underlined some of the details underpinning her

campaign promise to ‘build bridges’ between peoples, both in the North, and

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between North and South. McAleese was also seen in some quarters as being

too close to the Catholic church, whom she had served as an advisor during

1980s. Though clearly opposed to abortion, she was far from being a

mouthpiece for the hierarchy. She favoured a much greater role for women in

the church, and soon after her election, ran foul of the bishops when taking

communion in a (Protestant) Church of Ireland service. Scallon was more

clearly aligned with religious conservatism. She was very clear that she wanted

another referendum on abortion, and this ‘single issue’ appeal was a main factor

in her ability to obtain the local council nominations in the first place. She ran as

a candidate of the outsiders, those whose voice was unheard: the 49.7% who

had voted “no” to divorce in the 1995 referendum - despite the fact that all Dáil

parties had supported the yes position.

The campaign promised to be extremely bland. Without executive or legislative

powers, the job is about being, rather than doing, so the criteria for recruitment

are perhaps what people are rather than what they have done or will do. In the

past, party considerations had been predominant but, as Michael Laver

suggested, the whole area of presidential election campaigns had become

‘uncharted territory’6 after Mary Robinson’s victory in 1990. Following Mary

Robinson’s successful campaign, in which she undertook to use her office to try

to create a more inclusive Ireland, the candidates for the first few days appeared

to be competing on their ability to empathise. At the same time, the candidates

claimed their ‘experience’ would help them do the job well. Banotti’s career as a

European politician, and McAleese’s legal training were highlighted. However,

the campaign acquired a more astringent taste with attacks on Roche by some

5

former co-workers, and later attacks from several quarters on McAleese which

accused her of having pro-republican sympathies.7

INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

The election itself was notable for a very low turnout, 48%, down 14% on the

previous presidential election in 1990. Some attributed this to McAleese’s

comfortable lead in the several polls published in the last few days,8 although

falling turnout has been a feature of all Irish elections in recent years. 9 While

Banotti did quite well in Dublin, and actually out-polled McAleese in some of

the more middle-class areas of the city, McAleese won with 59% to Banotti’s

41% on the second count (see Table 1).10

What was the meaning of the vote?

The major question addressed by this paper is how the vote in the Irish presidential

election is to be interpreted. What was it that the voters expressed when they

returned their ballots? Two rather obvious theoretical perspectives can be brought to

bear on this. Both derive from the observation that hardly any power is invested in

the office of President of Ireland. As suggested above, it is more about being than

about doing – which implies that the election may be regarded as a kind of popularity

contest in which voters express what kind of person they want as their head of state.

To the extent that this interpretation is relevant, we would expect voters’ preferences

for presidential candidates to be largely unconnected to their political opinions, and

possibly to be even idiosyncratic in nature.11 The alternative interpretation of the

vote is that, for lack of any other relevant cues in a contest between unknown

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candidates, voters largely use the criteria they rely on in national (Dáil) elections.

This interpretation regards the Irish presidential election as a second-order national

election, that is an election that (in contrast to the first-order national elections to the

Dàil) plays no role in deciding who governs the country, but that is nevertheless

mainly driven by national political cues and considerations. 12 This view leads to the

expectation that the preferences for candidates reflect national party preferences and

the factors that underpin them. Moreover, because these candidates were relatively

unknown (at least in their capacity as politicians) at the beginning of the campaign,

we would expect such a structure to emerge more strongly as the campaign

unfolded and voters became more aware of candidates’ party affiliations.

Our strategy for analyzing voter choices is to a considerable extent determined by

the data at our disposal. We have comparable data from no less than five surveys

that were conducted for the Irish media.13 These surveys are rich in terms of

information on the dependent variable. Amongst other things, respondents were

always asked to rank-order the presidential candidates from most to least preferred.

In addition respondents were asked to indicate their first party preference for

national parliament. In terms of questions that can be used as independent variables,

however, these surveys are relatively poor. This forces us to address our main

research question to a large extent (although not exclusively) by methods

—generically known as unfolding— that focus on the internal structure of the set of

ranked candidate preferences. Earlier research has demonstrated that such methods

can illuminate the motivational dimensions underlying voter choice.14

Intertwined through our primary focus on the motivational basis of voters’

preferences is an interest in campaign effects. By this term we do not refer to changes

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in the standing of the various candidates in the polls (such as the precipitous decline

in support for Roche), but rather to the consequences of the campaign for voter

motivations. Campaigns provide voters with stimuli that may help them in several

ways. First of all campaigns provide straightforward information that is necessary if

voters are to express existing motivations effectively. If, for example, voters want to

support the candidate of a party they identify with or feel close to, they need to

know which candidates those are. In view of the fact that most of the candidates

were little known to the voters, we may expect the campaign to help establish these

linkages, thus enabling voters to apply partisan criteria in their choice if they wished

to do so. Second, campaigns may have (often intertwined) priming and framing

effects.15 The former alert and sensitize voters to criteria that become important

during the campaign for distinguishing candidates from one another and that

subsequently may be applied by voters in determining their own preferences. When,

in the early stages of the campaign, Roche’s former associates accused her of a

dictatorial style of leadership, this may have had the priming effect of encouraging

voters to take leadership style into consideration when looking at the candidates.

Framing refers to attempts to define specific events in a particular way, thereby

affecting the criteria that people will employ in making up their choice. Scallon’s use

of the presidential election as a suitable vehicle for furthering a new national

referendum on abortion can be seen as an attempt to frame what the election was

about. By informing, priming and framing, campaigns impinge on voters’

motivational bases, the consequences of which are then to be observed in the

structure of preferences for the various candidates. In view of the presence of

unknown candidates in an election where little if any power was at stake, we expect

the campaign to be of crucial importance in informing voters and in helping them

define what their vote was about. Therefore, we expect that, whatever motivational

8

aspects we uncover, voters’ preferences will increase in clarity and importance

during the campaign.

Unfolding models

We can detect shared voter motivations by analyzing the ‘hidden’ and underlying

structure in their candidate preferences. In order to detect such (common)

underlying structures - if they exist - we use unfolding methods. Before doing so, we

first briefly introduce these methods.

Methods that are designed for the purpose of detecting underlying common

structures in preference data are referred to as unfolding models.16 These methods

attempt to construct a single spatial representation of both persons and stimuli - in

our case voters and presidential candidates. The positions of persons and stimuli in

this so-called joint space (referred to by Coombs as the J-scale) should be such that

the distances between persons and stimuli reflect (inversely) the empirically

observed preferences of each person individually (the so-called I-scales): the more a

voter prefers a candidate, the smaller the distance between them in the spatial

representation. (In more formal terms this is referred to as the assumption of single-

peaked preferences.)17 These relations should hold to a satisfactory degree for all

voters and for all candidates. If such a space can be constructed, the position of

voters as well as candidates on the dimensions that define the space can be

calculated, and used to characterize them in further analyses. These positions can

also be used in the substantive interpretation of the dimensions, which is usually

done by taking into account other known characteristics of the stimuli and of the

9

subjects. These dimensions can be thought of as being both cognitive in character

(the J-scales indicate where voters perceive candidates as well as themselves) and

evaluative (the I-scales reflect distances between a person and the candidates on the

J-scale, which are the inverse of preferences). An interesting aspect of such

representations is that, if they can be constructed, they indicate that all voters

involved evaluate all candidates to a large degree on the basis of the same criteria.

Inability to construct such a spatial representation of the observed preferences can

indicate several things. It may signify that not all stimuli (candidates) are evaluated

on the same criteria; it may signify that voters do not have (to a sufficient degree) the

same perceptions of candidates; it may mean that not all preferences given by

individual voters are based on the same criteria.

While the number of candidates may be rather large when seen in the light of Irish

presidential elections, it is rather small for unfolding analysis. Therefore, it only

makes sense to investigate the extent to which preferences for these candidates can

be represented in unidimensional spaces.18 Various algorithms for unidimensional

unfolding exist, all of which are designed for specific types of data. Some are

designed for complete rankings (order all stimuli according to preference), some for

partial rankings (pick the k most preferred stimuli out of a pool of n), and yet others

for ratings (indicate for each stimulus the level of preference).19 Some can only

handle dichotomous scores; others can handle larger numbers of categories. In this

paper we will report results from the unfolding algorithm MUDFOLD.20 The

advantage of MUDFOLD over other available programs is that it provides a goodness-

of-fit measure — the H-coefficient— which can be used to compare the strength of a

scale over time. It also allows us to compare the strength of different scales

containing different sets of stimuli.21 H attains an upper limit of 1 if the constructed

10

scale represents the data perfectly, without any violations. If, on the other hand, a

proposed scale yields as many violations with empirical observations as would

occur in the case of statistical independence of the stimuli, H is 0.22 MUDFOLD may be

used in various ways: to test the scalability of an imposed set of stimuli in an

imposed ordering; to test the scalability of an imposed set of items without imposing

an ordering between them; and in an inductive fashion, where the program

determines which items from a given pool conform in which order to the criteria for

scalability. As will be clear from the following, we used all of these modes.

Results

We want to know three things from the unfolding analysis. First, is there a structure

hidden in people’s preferences? If there is, second, how does it evolve in the course

of the campaign? And third, how does it relate to the structure of preferences in the

first-order arena? To answer these questions we conducted a large series of

exploratory unfolding analyses on voters’ candidate preferences.23 The purpose was

to assess whether the entire set of preferences could be represented by an unfolded

scale, or if it could not, which subsets of candidates could be so represented. In

conducting these analyses, we also tried to take into account the possibility that not

all preferences were structured by common criteria - that the strongest ones were,

while weaker ones were not. In order to test for this possibility, the analyses were

conducted on four different transformations of the original preference rankings (see

also footnote 21). These transformations vary by how the complete set of preferences

is interpreted. The first one uses all information in the complete set of preferences

(the candidates’ rankings being analyzed as ratings in the MUDFOLD program). The

other three transformations are all based on simplifications of these data, made by

11

collapsing some of the original preferences. The second series of analyses

distinguishes the preferences for the three most preferred candidates, while the

preferences for the remaining two are assumed to be equal and coded to rank 4. The

third series of analyses carries this transformation further by distinguishing between

three categories: first preference, second preference, and finally third, fourth and

fifth preferences collapsed into one category. The second and third of our analyses

was each designed to allow for the possibility that a common underlying structure

determines which (two) candidates are preferred most. Our final analysis allows for

the possibility that distinctions between the two most preferred candidates, is also

determined more idiosyncratically. Hence, the fourth and final series of analyses is

based on a dichotomy in which the distinction between the two most preferred

candidates is disregarded, as both are coded 1, as are the distinctions between all

lower ranked candidates that are all coded 0.

A large number of exploratory unfolding analyses were carried out, using different

codings of preference orderings, as well as including different sub-samples of

candidates. In order to render the results of these analyses comparable over time, the

results for the best fitting scales of a subset of four candidates from the total of five

(four in the first survey) are presented here. Figure 2 shows graphically, for each of

the five surveys, the strength of the ‘best’ unfolded scale of four candidates that

could be formed for each of the four different transformations of the original

preference rankings.

INSERT FIGURE 2 HERE

12

The general patterns that emerge from Figure 2 can be summarized by two

observations. Firstly, there is very strong evidence of a single dimension underlying

voters’ preferences on polling day (the rightmost observations). The H values

indicate unidimensionality far in excess of what might occur though chance. The

dichotomous data transformations (in which the two most preferred candidates are

coded 1 and the others coded 0) and the trichotomous codings (in which the two

most preferred candidates are coded 2 and 1 respectively, and all others 0) fit the

assumptions of unidimensional unfolding much better than codings that also

distinguish between further preferences. Second, the unfolding structure strengthens

through time. The campaign effects a gradual increase in the strength (goodness of

fit) of the unfolded scales. This increase is most striking between the first and second

survey. This development applies to both higher and lower ranked preferences. This

means that not only are all voters' first candidate preferences increasingly based on

similar criteria, but so are their lower preferences as well.24

In each of the last three independently conducted surveys, a scale indicating the

ordering Roche, Banotti, Nally, Scallon turned out to yield the best fit. Because of the

robustness of this finding, we are confident that this scale represents a meaningful

ordering of the candidates that reflects a common cognitive and preferential

dimension. The probability that the same set of candidates would form unfolded

scales in three succeeding independently drawn samples when no common structure

existed in the evaluations of candidates is infinitely small. Hence we must conclude

that the set of candidates Roche-Banotti-Nally-Scallon are evaluated increasingly by

a single underlying criterion.25 However, it is not obvious what this criterion might

be. Nor is it possible to construct a satisfactory unfolded scale that reflects the

preferences for all five candidates. McAleese defies inclusion in one and the same

13

scale as the others. The addition of McAleese to the scale in the fifth survey (after

Scallon) does not really provide any clues either as to how it can be interpreted

substantively.

We will consider the significance of McAleese’s position later. Before that, we will

consider the substantive significance of the scale derived from the preferences

across the other four candidates. The existence of this scale makes it clear that voting

was not a wholly idiosyncratic exercise, but does not, in itself, tell us the nature of

the underlying structure. If a second-order perspective of Irish presidential elections

has any merit, we would expect to find the preferences for candidates structured in a

more or less similar way as preferences for parties. We already know that people’s

first preference seems to have had a clear party component. In the exit poll, 71% of

FF voters supported McAleese and 68% of FG voters Banotti. Moreover, we find this

linkage increases in strength as the campaign progresses. 26 Expressed in terms of

Cramer’s V (an association measure for nominal data) the strength of this

relationship increases as follows from the first to the fifth survey: 0.22, 0.22, 0.29,

0.31, 0.37, all of these values being highly significant, if not particularly strong. 27

Of course the unfolded scale obtained in the analyses reported above reflects not

only first preferences but lower preferences as well. What we are most interested in

here then is not the link between first party preference and first presidential

preference but between party and the unfolded scales. Analysis of this relationship

suggested there was at best a very weak link indeed. This was achieved in several

ways. First, we examined the relationship between voters’ position on the unfolded

scale 28 and their vote if there were a general election. Second, we examined the

relationship between voters’ position on the unfolded scale and their position on a

14

similar scale measuring evaluation of the parties. This scale could be constructed for

the first two of our five surveys since these contained questions about how

respondents’ evaluated the performance of the leaders of the five largest Irish

parties.29 These evaluations can satisfactorily be represented by a unidimensional

unfolded scale that reflects largely the left-right positions of the parties in the

following order: Democratic Left, Labour, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Progressive

Democrats.30 The scores on this scale correlated with those derived from the

candidate preferences, but the correlations were uniformly low: eta=0.16 between

vote and unfolded candidate preference and r=0.11 between unfolded candidate

preference and unfolded party leader preference. Even when we confined the

analysis to the set of the three party-nominated candidates, Roche, Banotti and

McAleese, the same result held. Moreover, while voter assessments of party leaders

from the three parties initially responsible for nominating Roche, Banotti and

McAleese, Labour, FG and FF, unfolded clearly in both surveys (H=0.46), the three

candidates do not give rise to a scale at all. The respective H-coefficients for the five

surveys are 0.03, 0.03, -0.02, 0.01, and 0.03. All this means that the structure of

partisanship is at best only weakly related to the structure underlying preferences

across the presidential candidates. The notion that people’s choices were made as if

the election were a second-order election gets little support.

Apart from partisanship and its underlying latent structure, we also assessed the

possible impact of issues that were brought to the fore during the campaign. The

issues of abortion and Northern Ireland were clearly present. 31 In addition to this,

the acrimony at the start of Roche’s campaign might have primed voters to the

question of leadership competence. The possibility that such concerns influence

preferences for candidates can be investigated empirically for the first two of these

15

issues, since the fourth survey contains a number of items on respondents’ issue

preferences. By correlating these with respondents’ scores on the candidate unfolded

scale we can determine this influence. In neither case did the correlation even reach

statistical significance.32 Of course it could be argued that such issue considerations

were of specific importance for the preferences for some, but not for all candidates.

After all, only some of the candidates were very outspoken on each of these issues.

We may thus continue our investigation from the other end: does knowledge about

which candidates were outspoken on certain issues and which were not help explain

(parts of) preference patterns, and, if so, how did these patterns evolve during the

campaign?

We considered three different issue concerns. The first was Northern Ireland. Two of

the candidates took clear and opposite positions on Northern Ireland: McAleese was

known to support the nationalist position while of all candidates Nally was clearly

least supportive of a nationalist view of the Northern Ireland problem. The other

three candidates more or less avoided the issue and can therefore not be located

adequately anywhere on a nationalist/anti-nationalist distinction. To the extent that

this issue was an important concern for voters, the number of people preferring

McAleese and Nally as their first two preferences should be smaller than would be

expected under statistical independence. To the extent that this issue gained in

importance during the campaign, this discrepancy between observed and expected

frequencies should increase. For the abortion issue the same reasoning holds for

Banotti (of all candidates the closest to a pro-choice view) and Scallon (most

outspoken anti-abortion). A third possible concern could be the personal quality of

candidates that can be seen as ‘competence for the job’. Only Banotti and McAleese

had prior experience - political and legal respectively - which could be brought to

16

bear directly on the governmental aspect of the presidential role. If this was a

concern for voters, the number of voters preferring Banotti and McAleese as first and

second candidates should be above its expected frequency under statistical

independence. If this concern became more salient, this discrepancy should

increase.33 Table 2 presents for these three pairs of candidates the ratio of observed

frequencies of being jointly first and second preference, and expected frequencies

under the null model.

INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

Table 2 suggests that the evaluations of presidential candidates were slightly

structured by the issues of abortion and Northern Ireland, as is evident from the

ratio being considerably smaller than 1. Moreover, the Northern Ireland issue

increased in prominence. On the other hand, the data do not indicate that the

personal competence of the candidates played an important role in voters’

evaluations of all candidates, at least insofar these were based on previous

politically-relevant experiences. However, if we inspect the main reasons that

respondents in the Lansdowne/RTE exit poll provided for their first preference

vote, we find that most voters for Banotti and McAleese stated that their candidate

was ‘most qualified for the job’. Other voters were more inclined to report issues as

the main reason for their first choice — Roche being often associated with

environmental concerns and Scallon with family, social, and religious issues.34 The

association between voters’ first choice candidate and whether the reasons given

were qualifications or issues is 0.37 (Cramer’s V). This suggests that voters employed

different considerations in the case of different candidates, but, again, this does not

17

provide much guidance as to how to interpret the common structure in evaluations

that emerged from the unfolding analyses.

All of this provides an interesting paradox. As the campaign proceeds, a single latent

dimension, except for preferences for McAleese, increasingly structured voters’

candidate preferences. The substantive meaning of this common structure remains

unclear. The fact that specific issues — Northern Ireland and abortion — did affect

some voters’ preferences does not help very much as the scale as a whole cannot be

interpreted in terms of either of these two issues, whose impact is evidently

restricted to some candidates only. If no unfolded scale had been found at all, it

would not have been difficult to ‘explain’ this. It could have been argued that the

symbolic character of the office precluded policy considerations from being of great

importance. It could have been asserted that virtually all candidates were unknown,

so that preferences contained a large idiosyncratic component. It could have been

concluded that, in the case of this particular set of candidates, the substantive

concerns raised in the campaign (such as the nationalist and abortion issues) were

each restricted in their relevance to only a few of the candidates. The obvious

problem with all these lines of reasoning is that we did find an unfolded scale, one

that was robust across all our surveys, and that increased in strength during the

campaign. If an unfolded scale had been found that reflected partisan preferences,

and their underlying ideological structure, it would not have been difficult to

‘explain’ this either. The second-order theory of elections could have been invoked to

explain the spill-over from the first-order political arena, while social-psychological

insights about cognitive cueing would elucidate why, when confronted with

unknown stimuli, people oriented themselves on the association of the candidates

with familiar objects, such as the national parties. However, these considerations,

18

particularly the second-order perspective, were inconsistent with our empirical

observations.

Finally, we checked whether demographic or socioeconomic factors could account

for differences in candidate preferences. Since Irish politics is often considered to

contain strong local concerns and identities, we estimated the extent to which voters’

position on the unfolded scale could be predicted by region.35 The association is

weak (eta = 0.22) but stronger than the relation with party preference (eta = 0.16).

Other voter characteristics are even weaker: eta for gender is 0.10, for age 0.18, and

for social class 0.11. So, regional differences seem to be related to candidate

preferences, although even here the differences are limited.

Consequently, in some ways the 1997 Irish presidential election remains an enigma.

To some extent the space in which the presidential candidates competed was multi-

dimensional, since the different issues, ideological preferences and other

considerations do not all translate into the same ordering of candidates. Given the

constraints imposed by the fact that there are ‘only’ five candidates multi-

dimensional unfolding is unfeasible. However, it is also redundant, because we

found that a single dimension emerges from the unfolding. In theory we may

conceive of this as one of the dimensions of a larger multi-dimensional space that

dominates other dimensions to such an extent that a unidimensional method yields a

perfectly acceptable result. We could hypothesize that the unfolded dimension

relates to a continuum of different political styles or personal characteristics but such

a hypothesis remains speculative as long as we are unable to specify and to test for

the existence of such styles.36 The different political styles or personal characteristics

that are connected with the opposite poles of the unfolded dimension are not

19

necessarily logically contradictory, yet empirically they may be negatively

correlated. In such cases it is possible that a candidate might combine the political

styles associated with the two opposite extremes of the scale. In our analysis such a

situation would result in non-scalability, since the respective candidate would be

preferred equally by voters at different positions on the continuum. But in terms of

competition for votes, it would yield a strong bonus for the candidate in question. In

contradistinction to the other candidates, for whom an electoral trade-off is involved

(more of a good thing for some voters yields less of an other good thing that is

preferred by other voters) the candidate that successfully combines the two political

styles will be successful among voters at different positions on the dimension. This

could be a (somewhat tentative) explanation for the McAleese's victory: she enjoyed

strong support from all voters irrespective their most preferred position on the

unfolded scale.

Discussion

In the context of a first-order election, power to govern is at stake and voters are

directed to the question as to which party they entrust with power to govern. In the

context of a second-order election little power is at stake, and voters face the

question as to what kind of ‘message’ they can sensibly express, unrestrained by the

real consequences of allocating political power. In this Irish presidential election,

however, neither power, nor sending a message to the first-order arena seems to

have been at stake. Maybe this is the consequence of a particular combination of

contextual factors that will not necessarily be repeated. Had the presidential

candidates been recruited from Dáil and government positions, had they strongly

emphasized their partisan ties, had the election taken place at the end (rather that at

20

the start) of a Dáil term, and had strong inter-party conflict reigned in the first-order

political arena, then this election might very well have turned out to be a second-

order one in the classic sense of the term. But these conditions did not exist: the

candidates were unknown; two had no ties at all with national parties; the other

three emphatically de-emphasized their party affiliation during the campaign; and

only four months had passed since the last Dáil election - so the parliamentary

election remained an accepted indicator of the current electoral strength of the

various parties.

In view of the large number of voters whose first candidate preference coincided

with their first national party preference it would be incorrect to term this

presidential election non-partisan. On the other hand, the total absence of the normal

(first-order) structure of partisan preferences in the set of preferences for candidates

casts doubt on the interpretation of these concurrences as partisan-motivated.

Perhaps the second-order election perspective is inappropriate for Irish-style

presidential elections, because of the inherently greater importance of personal

qualities of candidates in comparison to parliamentary elections and the concomitant

smaller role of partisan factors. Obviously, this suggests a need for further inquiry,

in which two aspects are of importance. One is the need for more insight into voters’

preferences for leadership styles that may help explain differences in candidate

preferences. The second is to assess comparatively the impact of such preferences for

leadership styles in presidential elections that allocate real political power (as is the

case in the USA, and, although to a lesser extent, also in semi-presidential systems

such as France and Finland) and in those that do not (as in the Irish or Austrian

cases).37

21

The second outcome of our study concerns processes of informing, framing and

priming in election campaigns. The Irish presidential election was interestingly

atypical in the degree to which the candidates were unknown at the start of the

campaign. Voters needed to acquire relevant information in a short period of time.

The costs involved in this in terms of time and energy make it rational for voters to

focus on readily available cues, such as party labels, ideological labels and the like.38

However, our analyses did not show clear signs of these information shortcuts. A

possible explanation is that the information that became available during this

campaign was not linked by political or media elites to any coherent new or pre-

existing frame of reference. Schema theory as well as theories of ‘on-line information

processing’ argues that people interpret new information within a frame of reference

that is provided by their current cognitions and integrate this new information into

their ‘working memory’.39 But such a common frame of reference was not readily

available; it seemed rather that the five unknown candidates played in different

arenas. Some took stands on Northern Ireland, while some did not. Others took

stands on abortion, while some did not. Positions on these issues coincided neither

with each other nor with left/right positions. Two candidates not being aligned to

any party and the others not emphasizing such ties undermined the relevance of

partisan cues. Consequently, what the election was about was not framed in terms of

a single definition, neither by the first-order political arena, nor by the media, and

consequently not by the voters. That may explain why priming or framing effects are

not visible in a structuring of preferences that holds for all candidates and all voters.

Yet we also saw that particularly with respect to the Northern Ireland and abortion

issues the campaign did succeed in affecting preferences for those candidates that

took more outspoken positions.

22

Finally, the established if enigmatic insight that campaigns matter because of the

information and orientation they provide has definitely been confirmed.40 First of all,

we observed a tremendous amount of net fluctuation of preferences during the

campaign, in individual (gross) terms this will be even more pronounced (Figure 1).

Moreover, we saw that the linkage between first candidate preference and first party

preference, although far from deterministic, clearly strengthens in the course of the

campaign. In addition, even in the short span of this specific campaign, a latent

dimension developed that increasingly structures preference for four of the five

candidates. As discussed above, in the absence of adequate survey instruments that

may be employed as independent variables, the nature of this dimension remains

unclear. Our story of how the Irish presidential elections unfolded thus

demonstrates (again) that voters are no fools: they are sensitive to what is at stake, to

the particular palette of options for choice, and to the information that they obtain in

the course of an election campaign. The terrain of Irish presidential elections is not

quite as uncharted as it was, but our inability as yet to explicate the nature of the

orientations that voters developed in the campaign makes any presidential election

very much an opportunity for further discovery.

23

1 K. Reif and H. Schmitt, ‘Nine Second-order National Elections. A Conceptual Framework for the

Analysis of European Election Results’, European Journal of Political Research 8 (1980), 3-44; P. Norris ‘

Second-order elections revisited’, European Journal of Political Research, 31(1997) 109-14; K. Reif,

‘European elections as member state second-order elections revisited’, European Journal of Political

Research, 31 (1997), 115-24; M. Marsh and M. Franklin, ‘The Foundations: Unanswered Questions from

the Study of European Elections, 1979-1994’, in C. v an de r Ei jk and M . Fr an kli n, ed s , C hoo s ing E uro pe ?

The Eu ro pe an Ele cto r at e a nd Na ti on al P o litic s in t he F ac e o f Uni on . (An n Ar bo r : The Uni ver s i ty o f

M ic h igan Pr es s , 1996), pp. 11-32; E.V. Opp enhui s , C. v an de r Ei jk and M . Fr an kli n ‘T he P arty Co ntex t:

Ou tco m es ’, in van de r Ei jk and Fr ank li n , C hoo s ing E uro pe ? pp. 287-306; C. van der Eijk, M . Fr ankl i n,

and E.V . Op penhui s , ‘T he S tr ategi c Co ntex t: Par ty C ho i ce’ , in v an de r Ei jk and Fr ank li n , C hoo s ing

Eu ro pe ? pp. 366-90; C. J. Anderson and D. S. Ward, ‘Barometer Elections in Comparative Perspective’,

Electoral Studies, 15 (1997), 447-60; M. Franklin, ‘Electoral Participation’, in L. LeDuc, R. Niemi and P.

Norris eds, Comparing Democracies: Elections and Voting in Global Perspective (London: Sage, 1996), pp.

216-35 ; C. van der Eijk, M. Franklin and M. Marsh, ‘What voters teach us about Europe-wide

elections: what Europe-wide elections teach us about voters’, Electoral Studies, 15 (1996), 149-66. In a

somewhat different sense see also E. A. Bakker and A. Lijphart. ‘A critical test of alphabetic voting:

the elections at the University of Leiden’, British Journal of Political Science, 10 (1980), 521-25.

2 M. S. Shugart and J. M. Carey, Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

3 It was not at all clear that an election would be required in 1997. Had the incumbent Mary

Robinson chosen to run again it is likely that she would have been unopposed. Once she

declared her intention in March to take up a position with the UN, an election seemed likely,

although the possibility that John Hume, leader of Northern Ireland’s SDLP would be an

unopposed nominee remained a real possibility until early September. Only once he decided to

stay in NI politics was an election a certainty.

24

4 For more detail on the nominations and campaign see M. Marsh, ‘The Making of the Irish President

1997’, in M. Marsh and P. Mitchell, eds, How Ireland Voted 1997 (Boulder CO : Westview/PSAI Press,

1999)pp. 215-242; John Doyle, ‘The Irish Presidential Election’, Irish Political Studies Vol 13, 1998, pp.

135-144.

5 The Sunday Business Post published extracts from Department of Foreign Affairs documents on

October 12 and suggested these indicated that McAleese was a Sinn Féin supporter, although

McAleese denied this, saying her remarks had been taken out of context. A second set of leaked

documents was published by the same paper on October 19, and once again was interpreted as

indicating that McAleese had Sinn Féin leanings. On October 16 Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams

told a radio interviewer that he would vote for McAleese (if given the opportunity).

6 M. Laver, ‘Pr es i den cy can di dates f ace co nu ndr um’ , Ir is h Time s, 22 Oc to ber 1997. O n R ob in so n ’s

v ic to r y, s ee: M . Gallagher and M. Marsh, ‘The 1990 Presidential Election: Implications for the Future’,

in R.J. Hill and M. Marsh, eds, Modern Irish Democracy: Essays in Honour of Basil Chubb (Dublin: Irish

Academic Press, 1993), pp. 62-81

7 On September 21 thirteen former employees of Adi Roche’s organisation announced they would not

be supporting her, as that her style of leadership was too authoritarian and dictatorial. Attacks on

McAleese followed a story in the Sunday Business Post which alleged that she had republican

sympathies (see note 3) and came particularly from Derek Nally’s organisation and later from John

Bruton, leader of FG: see Marsh, ‘The Making of the Irish President 1997’ and Doyle, ‘The Irish

Presidential Election’.

8 Four polls were published in the last week of the campaign, all predicting a comfortable win for

McAleese. In addition to two IMS polls (see note 13) there were also two MRBI/Irish Times polls,

published on October 25 and 29. Several commentators blamed the polls for the low turnout and

there was media discussion, for instance in RTE’s The Politics Programme the following week, of the

value of banning polls in the last part of a campaign.

25

9 For details see J. Coakley and M. Gallagher eds, Politics in the Republic of Ireland (London:

Routledge/PSAI Press, 1999, 3rd edition), Appendix 2. See Marsh, ‘The Making of the Irish President

1997’ p. 229 for a discussion of Presidential election turnout.

10 One of the advantages of the transferable vote system is that we get some idea of the preference

orderings of voters from the manner in which support transfers between candidates. However, in this

instance Nally, Scallon and Roche were all eliminated together as the combined of the bottom two

candidates was insufficient to bridge the gap between third (Scallon) and second (Banotti) and hence

there are no details on whose vote transferred where. However, polls suggested supporters of Nally

and Scallon favoured McAleese, while Roche’s voters preferred Banotti. For a description of the single

transferable vote (STV) system in the Irish context see R. Sinnott, ‘The Electoral System’, in Coakley

and Gallagher, Politics in the Republic of Ireland pp.99-126.

11 The expectation of politically unstructured, idiosyncratic preferences for candidates derives from

the absence in the campaign of any reference to candidate characteristics such as masculine vs.

feminine, young vs. old, formal vs. informal, etc. All candidates attempted to outdo each other in

being empathetic.

12 Gallagher and Marsh and later Sinnott suggested this perspective was a useful one but neither

study developed the parallels very far. See Gallagher and Marsh, ‘The 1990 presidential election’; R.

Sinnott, Irish Voters Decide (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).

Depending upon their timing in relation to first-order (Dàil) elections, second-order elections may

give rise to various kinds of strategic voter behaviour. This is unlikely to occur, however, when a

second-order election is conducted shortly after a first-order one, as is the case here: regular Dàil

elections were held in June, only a few months before the presidential election. In such situations

there are minimal incentives for strategic voting and maximal for sincere voting. See, e.g. Reif and

Schmitt, ‘Nine Second-order National Elections’; Marsh and Franklin ‘The Foundations’; Oppenhuis

et al. ‘The Party Context’; M. Marsh, ‘Testing the second-order election theory after four European

elections’, British Journal of Political Science, 28 (1998) 591-607.

26

13 Four of these were conducted within the six weeks prior to the election, and one is an exit poll. The

first four were conducted by Irish Marketing Surveys for Independent Newspapers Ltd, starting on

18 September, at the end of the week in which four candidates were nominated. Polls were then

conducted on 2 October, 23 October and 25 October. Each poll interviewed approximately 1100

respondents drawn from 100 sampling areas. Face-to-face interviewing took place in randomly

located homes, with selection of individuals according to socioeconomic quotas. Lansdowne Market

Research conducted the exit poll for RTE on 30 October and interviewed 2498 voters face-to-face at

150 polling stations in all 41 constituencies. Full details of all questions and responses, by various

subgroups, for all but the RTE poll may be found at the Irish Opinion Poll Archive website:

http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/cgi/.

The data sets used here are available at the Irish Election Data Archive website:

http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/elections/elections.html.

14 W.H. van Schuur, Structure in Political Beliefs. A new unfolding model with application to European party

activists (Amsterdam: CT Press, 1984); W.H. van Schuur, ‘From Mokken to MUDFOLD and back’, in

M. Fennema, C. van der Eijk and H. Schijf eds, In search of structure. Essays in social science and

methodology (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1993), pp. 45-62; J. Tillie, Party Utility and Voting Behavior

(Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1995).

15 H. Semetko, ‘The Media’ in L. LeDuc, R. Niemi and P. Norris, eds Comparing Democracies: Elections

and Voting in Global Perspective, Sage, 1996, pp. 254-79.

16 C.H. Coombs A Theory of Data (New York/London: Wiley, 1964, 2nd edition, 1975).

17 Coombs A Theory of Data; van Schuur, ‘From Mokken to MUDFOLD and back’; van Schuur, Structure

in Political Beliefs.

18 Multi-dimensional spatial representations would pose so few restrictions on the data that very

different configurations would all fit the data perfectly, which implies that they would be trivial.

Unidimensional representations of 3 or more stimuli will not by necessity fit well, so that if they do

fit, a relevant empirical result has been attained.

27

19 A good overview of different unfolding models can be found in a special issue of the journal

Kwantitatieve Methoden 42 (Jan 1993) devoted to the topic.

20 For an introduction to MUDFOLD see Van Schuur, Structure in Political Beliefs; W.H. van Schuur,

‘Stochastic Unfolding’, in W. E. Saris and I. N. Gallhofer eds, Sociometric Research, Vol. I: Data Collection

and Scaling (London: Macmillan, 1988) pp. 137-58; van Schuur, ‘From Mokken to MUDFOLD and

back’.

21 Unfortunately the advantages of MUDFOLD do not come without cost: its algorithm cannot handle

full rank orders, but only partial rankings (pick k out of n) or preference ratings. Consequently, in

order to use this algorithm, we either have to transform the data so that they can be interpreted as

partial rankings, or we must treat them as if they were ratings. Transforming full rankings to partial

rankings is relatively simple. Partial orderings are derived from the full rank ordering of candidates

by giving a score of 1 to the k highest preferences, and 0 to all lower preferences (i.e.: pick 2 out of 5

yields for every respondent a string of 5 scores, one for each candidate, two of which are 1’s, the rest

being 0’s). By using different values for k (the number of ‘picked’ items) and comparing the resulting

unfolding analyses one can assess whether or not all distinctions in the original complete preference

ranking are equally informative in terms of a common structure. Interpreting rankings as ratings

involves an inversion of preference ranks: the first preference candidate is assigned the highest

preference score, and so on. Variations of such ratings can be obtained by collapsing categories.

Comparing unfolding results from these different recoded preferences helps to assess which

distinctions in the original complete preference ranking are structured in a joint scale and which are

not.

Because of the need to transform our data to analyze them with MUDFOLD, we performed all

analyses also with a different program for unidimensional unfolding, UNFOLD. As each of these

algorithms has their own particular pros and cons, we used both and compared their results.

UNFOLD can handle proper rank-order data, and thus requires no re-coding of the data. However,

because UNFOLD is a deterministic program, there is no way to test its results against a null-

hypothesis of random response, which is one of the strong points of MUDFOLD. The UNFOLD

approach has been documented by R. van Blokland-Vogelesang, ‘Unimodal Social Preference Curves

28

in Unidimensional Unfolding’, Kwantitatieve Methoden, 42 (1993), 19-38 and R. van Blokland-

Vogelesang and P. van Blokland, Unfold: Unidimensional Unfolding of Preference Data. Users' Manual.

(Groningen: Iec ProGAMMA, 1989).

Since the analyses with both packages yielded the same substantive results, there is no need to

present them both here. Both are displayed in the appendix of a conference paper: W. van der Brug,

C. van der Eijk and M. Marsh Unfolding the Irish Presidential Election 1997. Paper presented at the 1998

Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston 3-6 September 1998.

MUDFOLD and UNFOLD are both distributed by ProGAMMA, P.O. Box 841, 9700 AV Groningen,

the Netherlands. See also http://www.gamma.rug.nl.

22 According to Van Schuur an H-coefficient smaller than 0.30 indicates insufficient structure in the

data to justify treating the individual items as indicators of a single latent dimension. H coefficients of

between 0.30 and 0.40 indicate a weak unfolding scale, between 0.40 and 0.50 a medium scale, and

above 0.50 a strong scale. See Van Schuur, Structure in Political Beliefs.

23 In the first survey, preferences for only four candidates were asked, as Nally had not yet entered the

race. As of the second survey, preferences pertain to all five candidates.

24 Although in the course of the campaign weaker preferences also become increasingly structured by

the same criteria as stronger preferences, they are nevertheless more determined by idiosyncratic

yardsticks. It would be wrong to regard the latter as not rational or not meaningful; they are rather

more individually relevant. As a consequence, such weaker preferences (in effect third and lower

rankings) will be less effective in generating political representation. One reason for this is that, when

elections are viewed as a means of mass-elite communication, the electoral ‘message’ can only be

effective if voters employ common criteria, as argued by P. E. Converse, ‘Public Opinion and Voting

Behavior’, in F.E. Greenstein and N. W. Polsby, eds, Handbook of Political Science (Vol. 4) pp. 75-170

(Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1975) and by W. van der Brug, Where's the Party? Voters' Perceptions of

Party Positions (Amsterdam: Dissertation University of Amsterdam, 1997). Moreover, when we view

elections within the ‘responsible party’ model, parties should promote public policies in accordance

with voters’ preferences. The possibility of doing so increases when the behaviour of voters and of

their representatives is structured by the same underlying ideological continuum (e.g., J. Thomassen,

29

‘Empirical Research into Political Representation: Failing Democracy or Failing Models’, in M. K.

Jennings and T. E. Mann eds, Elections at Home and Abroad: Essays in Honor of Warren E. Miller (Ann

Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), pp. 237-64.

25 A colleague suggested that the increasing strength of the unfolded scales might be caused by the

fact that voters became increasingly indifferent between lower ranked candidates. This explanation

was ruled out on two accounts. First, indifference between lower ranked candidates does not affect

the analyses in which all lower ranked values are collapsed in one category (see footnote 14). Second,

indifference yields, almost by definition, randomness, which by necessity defies scalability.

26 Marsh, ‘The Making of the Irish President 1997’p. 232-3.

27 These coefficients were computed on contingency tables that included only respondents who stated

a first preference for any of the parties that formally supported one of the presidential candidates. If

we included those without party, and modeled their expected vote as one for a non-party candidate,

Cramer’s V would be a little higher.

28 We used a procedure proposed by W. van der Brug, ‘Determining Scale Values for Subjects in

MUDFOLD’, Kwantitatieve Methoden, 44 (1993), 9-20. In these and subsequent analyses we focus on the

trichotomous codings of candidate preferences (distinguishing between the first, the second, and all

subsequent preferences combined) since that transformation of the data yielded the strongest

unfolding scales.

29 The questions were generally phrased as follows: ‘Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way

[leader] is doing his job as leader of [party]?’ In the case of Bertie Ahern and FF the question was: ‘Are

you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way Bertie Ahern is doing his job as Taoiseach?’

30 The best fitting MUDFOLD scales in both surveys were identical and yielded the following ordering

of the national party leaders: Proinsias de Rossa (DL), Dick Spring (Labour), John Bruton (FG), Bertie

Ahern (FF), and Mary Harney (PD). In both surveys the strength of this unfolding scale is the same:

30

H=0.39. Although not overwhelmingly strong, such a value is generally considered acceptable (see

footnote 22). The unfolding scales of electoral preferences across these parties as asked in the

European Election Studies of 1989 and 1994 were considerable stronger: well over 0.50. We must keep

in mind, however, that the questions analyzed here tap party preferences in a less direct way, as they

refer to evaluations of current party leaders ‘as leaders of their particular parties’. These items thus

tap a combination of party preferences and evaluations of leaders’ performance. In spite of this

somewhat less satisfactory item content, we clearly find a structure that resembles that from earlier

studies.

31 On Northern Ireland see note 5. Scallon was well known for her pro-Life sympathies. She was asked

about this issue on numerous occasions, most notably in a set piece interview with all the candidates

on a major RTE TV programme, The Late Late Show. Alone of all the candidates she declared that as

President she would not sign any piece of legislation that made abortion easier to obtain.

32 Question wordings are as follows: Northern Ireland: ‘Articles 2 & 3 of our Constitution assert a

legal claim to the territory of Northern Ireland. It has been suggested that they should be amended to

confirm our acceptance that there will be no change to the existing constitutional status of Northern

Ireland except by peaceful means and with the consent of a majority in Northern Ireland. Do you

think Articles 2 & 3 should be left as they are or should they be amended as outlined?’ The position

against amendment is seen as the more nationalist one.

Abortion: ‘It has been argued that the Supreme Court decision in the “x” case resulted in an

interpretation of the Amendment to the Constitution which the electorate could not have foreseen

when they voted in favour of that amendment. Do you favour or oppose the idea of a further

referendum being held on the question of abortion?’ The position in favour of a referendum is seen as

the more strongly conservative.

33 The expected numbers under statistical independence were computed with an algorithm

incorporated in MUDFOLD.

34 For details see Marsh, ‘The Making of the Irish President 1997’ p.236-7.

31

35 10 regions were distinguished.

36 It must be noted that in order to understand the substantive meaning of a latent dimension such as

the one found in this study, one should not only be able to label it, but also to regard it as a

continuum of different ‘ideals’ of voters. Consequently, this unfolding dimension cannot be about

‘competence’ or ‘honesty’, as it is difficult to conceive that voters exist who would prefer an

incompetent or dishonest candidate.

37 For a review of work on these themes see I. McAllister, ‘Leaders’, in LeDuc, Niemi and Norris,

Comparing Democracies pp. 280-98.

38 A. Lupia and M. D. McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1997).

39 See, e.g., S. Feldman and P. J. Conover, ‘Candidates, Issues, and Voters: The Role of Inference in

Political Perceptions’, Journal of Politics, 45 (1983), 812-39; P. J. Conover and S. Feldman, ‘How People

Organize the Political World: A Schematic Model’, American Journal of Political Science, 28 (1984), 95-

126. See in this context also theories of ‘on-line information processing’: M. Lo d ge, K. M c Gr aw an d P.

S tr o h. ‘An I mpr es s i o n-d ri v en M o del o f C andi date Ev aluati o n’, A me ric an Po litic al Scie nce R evie w 87

(1989) , 399-419.

40 A. Gelman and G. King, ‘Why are American presidential-election campaign polls so variable when

votes are so predictable’, British Journal of Political Science, 23(4) 1993, pp. 409-51.

1

Appendix

This appendix gives an overview of the results of Mudfold in which the best

unfolded scales are sought containing preferences for four (out of five) candidates.

These results are described briefly in Table A.1. The H-coefficient is the most

important diagnostic for deciding whether a set of items can be interpreted as

indicators of a single latent dimension. If the value of the H-coefficient is lower than

0.3 the items do not form a scale, values between 0.3 and 0.4 indicate a weak scale,

values between 0.4 and 0.5 indicate a moderately strong scale (W.H. van Schuur,

Structure in Political Beliefs. A new unfolding model with application to European party

activists (Amsterdam: CT Press, 1984)).

2

Table A.1: summary description of main results of MUDFOLD analyses

Values of the H-coefficients

codings of

candidate

preferences

permutations 1st

wave

2nd

wave

3rd

wave

4th

wave

5th

wave

full rankings:

0, 1, 2, 3, 4

DAEB

CADB

-.11

* -.08 .09 .13 .25

0 (twice), 1, 2, 3 DAEB

ACED

DACE

-.11

*

*

.02

.01 .10 .13 .40

0 (3 times), 1, 2 DAEB

DECB

DACE

.12

*

*

.37

.30 .43 .46 .42

0 (3 times), 1

(twice)

DAEB

ADCE

DACE

-.09

*

*

.26

.22 .43 .47 .40

(A = Banotti, B = McAleese, C = Nally, D = Roche, E = Scallon)

* = cannot be estimated because Nally was not then a candidate

3

FIGURES AND TABLES

Table 1: First and second count vote shares

Banotti McAleese Nally Roche Scallon

1st Count 29.3% 45.2% 4.7% 7.0% 13.8%

Transfers + 12.0% +13.5% -25.5%

2nd count 41.3% 58.7%

Source: Seán Donnelly, Elections ’97 (Dublin: Seán Donnelly, 1998) p.433.

4

Table 2: Number of respondents ranking two candidates first and second divided by

the expected frequency if preferences were statistically independent.

18 Sept 2 Oct 23 Oct 25 Oct 30 Oct

Northern Ireland

(McAleese vs. Nally)

Nally not yet

running 0.92 0.75 0.72 0.63

Abortion

(Banotti vs. Scallon) 0.78 0.74 0.73 0.65 0.73

Competence

(Banotti and

McAleese)

1.01 1.03 0.97 0.99 0.91

Source: calculations on the basis of the IMS and Lansdowne data detailed in note 13.

Note: cell entries indicate the number of voters who were ranked two candidates

first and second (or second and first) as a proportion of the number that would be

expected to do so on the basis of statistical independence of candidate preferences.

For example, in the survey conducted on the 2nd of October 77 respondents ranked

McAleese and Nally as the first two candidates (Nally first and McAleese second or

vice versa). The expected frequency under the null model of statistical independence

(as computed by MUDFOLD) was estimated at 83.3. The value 0.92 is the ratio of 77

and 83.3. The further the proportion from unity, the greater the apparent impact of

the issue on which the two candidates were divided (Northern Ireland, Abortion) or

united (Competence).

5

Figure 1: Campaign polls showing each candidate’s share of (first) preference votes.

0

10

20

30

40

500 2 4 6 8

10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44

Date

Nally

Scallon

Roche

Banotti

McAleese

18 Sept30 Oct

Supp

ort

6

Figure 2: Strength of Unidimensionality of Unfolded Candidate Scales

(0.2)

(0.1)

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

H c

oeffi

cien

t val

ues

18 S

ept

2 O

ct

23 O

ct

25 O

ct

30 O

ct

DichotomousTrichotomous

4 CategoriesFull ranking

Note: values in brackets are negative.