Much of what we know about the alignment of voters with parties comes from mass surveys of the electorate in the postwar period or from aggregate electoral data. Using individual elector level panel data from 19th-century United Kingdom poll books, we reassess the development of a party-centred...

Political parties play a crucial gatekeeping role in elections, including controlling electoral resources, candidate recruitment, and electoral list compositions. In making these strategic choices, parties aim to encourage candidates to invest in the campaign, while also trying to secure...

We use novel data to describe the evolution of party differences in parliamentary speech in Finland during 1907-2018. We find a peak in left-right polarization in the 1970s, driven by the extreme left party, and co-occuring with a high prevalance of Soviet Union related phrases, perhaps...