Electoral integrity – The winner takes it all? Evidence from three British general elections

Abstract

Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Studies of electoral integrity typically focus on electoral evaluators (expert surveys), electoral consumers (electors) and occasionally, electoral producers (electoral administrators). Using a unique new dataset collected at the British general elections of 2010, 2015 and 2017, this article examines evaluations of electoral integrity amongst a previously unresearched group of electoral users – the election agents of candidates standing for election. Using measures of both negative and positive electoral integrity, the article models explanations of users’ evaluations, focussing on agent characteristics, geography and the electoral status of the district or constituency. It shows that evaluations of electoral integrity vary significantly and highlights both that questions of electoral integrity are more localized than widespread, and that despite the significant impact of winner/loser effects, issues of electoral integrity are strongly related to the urban characteristics of an electoral district. In so doing, it makes a significant contribution to the literature on electoral integrity.