B.J.Pol.S.

30, 631–650 Copyright  2000 Cambridge University Press

Printed in the United Kingdom

Exploring Uncharted Territory: The Irish

Presidential Election, 1997
WOUTER VAN DER BRUG, CEES VAN DER EIJK
A N D MICHAEL MARSH*

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.

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 article extends this body

* Van der Brug and van der Eijk: Department of Political Science and Amsterdam School of
Communications Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam; Marsh: Department of Political
Science, Trinity College Dublin.
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. van der Eijk and
M. Franklin, eds, Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of
Union (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 11–32; E.V. Oppenhuis, C. van
der Eijk and M. Franklin, ‘The Party Context: Outcomes’, in van der Eijk and Franklin, Choosing
Europe? pp. 287–306; C. van der Eijk, M. Franklin and E.V. Oppenhuis, ‘The Strategic Context:
Party Choice’, in van der Eijk and Franklin, Choosing Europe? pp. 366–90; C. J. Anderson and
D. S. Ward, ‘Barometer Elections in Comparative Perspective’, Electoral Studies, 15 (1996), 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
632 V A N D E R B R U G, V A N D E R E I J K A N D M A R S H

of work by analysing Irish voters’ preferences for the candidates running in the
30 October 1997 Irish presidential election.
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 twenty 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 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’

(F’note continued)
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), 521–5.
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 United Nations, an election seemed likely,
although the likelihood that John Hume, leader of Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic Labour Party
(SDLP) would be an unopposed nominee remained a real possibility until early September. Only once
he decided to stay in politics in Northern Ireland was an election a certainty.
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, Colo.:
Westview/PSAI Press, 1999), pp. 215–42; John Doyle, ‘The Irish Presidential Election’, Irish
Political Studies, 13 (1998), 135–44.
 Exploring Uncharted Territory 633

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

charity. Rosemary Scallon (stage name Dana) was a one-time winner of the
Eurovision Song Contest, who was working for a Roman Catholic television
station in the United States.
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 organization 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 Adams.5 This
episode lasted over a week in which attention focused very much on McAleese,
5
The Sunday Business Post published extracts from Department of Foreign Affairs documents
on 12 October 1997 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 19 October, and once again was interpreted as
634 V A N D E R B R U G, V A N D E R E I J K A N D M A R S H

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
between North and South of Ireland. McAleese was also seen in some quarters
as being too close to the Catholic church, whom she had served as an adviser
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 per cent
who had voted ‘No’ to divorce in the 1995 referendum – despite the fact that
all Dáil parties had supported the ‘Yes’ position.

TABLE 1 First and Second Count Vote Shares

1st Transfers 2nd

count (%) (%) count (%)

Banotti 29.3 1 12.0 41.3

McAleese 45.2 1 13.5 58.7
Nally 4.7
Roche 7.0 2 25.5
Scallon 13.8
Total 100.0 100.0

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

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 empathize. At the same time, the candidates
claimed their ‘experience’ would help them do the job well. Banotti’s career as

(F’note continued)
indicating that McAleese had Sinn Féin leanings. On 16 October Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams
had told a radio interviewer that he would vote for McAleese (if given the opportunity).
6
M. Laver, ‘Presidency candidates face conundrum’, Irish Times, 22 October 1997. On
Robinson’s victory, see: 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.
 Exploring Uncharted Territory 635

a European politician and McAleese’s legal training were highlighted.

However, the campaign acquired a more astringent taste with attacks on Roche
by some former co-workers, and later attacks from several quarters on McAleese
which accused her of having pro-republican sympathies.7
The election itself was notable for a very low turnout, 48 per cent, down 14
per cent 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 per cent
to Banotti’s 41 per cent on the second count (see Table 1).10

WHAT WAS THE MEANING OF THE VOTE?

The major question addressed by this article 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

7
On 21 September thirteen former employees of Adi Roche’s organization announced they
would not be supporting her, because 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 fn. 3) and came particularly from Derek Nally’s organization 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 fn. 13) there were also two MRBI/Irish Times polls,
published on 25 and 29 October. 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.
9
For details, see J. Coakley and M. Gallagher, eds, Politics in the Republic of Ireland, 3rd edn
(London: Routledge/PSAI Press, 1999), Appendix 2. See Marsh, ‘The Making of the Irish President
1997’, p. 229, for a discussion of turnout in presidential elections.
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.
636 V A N D E R B R U G, V A N D E R E I J K A N D M A R S H

idiosyncratic in nature.11 The alternative interpretation of the vote is that, for

lack of any other relevant cues in a contest between unknown 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 Dáil) 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 analysing 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

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 (Dáil) 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 Dáil 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.
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 1,100
respondents drawn from a hundred 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 2,498 voters face-to-face
at 150 polling stations in all forty-one 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 datasets used here are available at the Irish Election
Data Archive website http://www.tcd.ie/Political Science/elections/elections.html.
 Exploring Uncharted Territory 637

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 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. Secondly,
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 aspects we uncover, voters’
preferences will increase in clarity and importance during the campaign.

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 (London: Sage, 1996), pp. 254–79.
638 V A N D E R B R U G, V A N D E R E I J K A N D M A R S H

UNFOLDING MODELS

We can detect shared voter motivations by analysing 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 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

16
C.H. Coombs, A Theory of Data, 2nd edn (New York: Wiley, 1975 [1964]).
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 three or more stimuli will not by necessity fit well, so that if they
do fit, a relevant empirical result has been attained.
 Exploring Uncharted Territory 639

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 article 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 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

19
A good overview of different unfolding models can be found in a special issue of the journal
Kwantitatieve Methoden, 42 (January 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 must either transform the data so that they can be interpreted as partial
rankings, or 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 two out of five yields
for every respondent a string of five scores, one for each candidate, two of which are 1, the rest being
0). 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 analyse 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 in Unidimen-
sional 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). 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
640 V A N D E R B R U G, V A N D E R E I J K A N D M A R S H

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, secondly, how does it
evolve in the course of the campaign? And thirdly, 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
fn. 21). These transformations vary according to the interpretation of the
complete set of preferences. The first one uses all information in the complete
set of preferences (the candidates’ rankings being analysed as ratings in the
MUDFOLD program). The other three transformations are all based on
simplifications of these data, made by 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 prefer-
ences 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, are 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.
(F’note continued)
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.
 Exploring Uncharted Territory 641

Fig. 2. Strength of unidimensionality of unfolded candidate scales

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

different codings of preference orderings, as well as including different
subsamples 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.
The general patterns that emerge from Figure 2 can be summarized by two
observations. First, 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. Secondly, 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
642 V A N D E R B R U G, V A N D E R E I J K A N D M A R S H

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 underly-
ing 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 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 per cent of FF voters supported
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 (Reading:
Addison-Wesley, 1975), pp. 75–170, and by W. van der Brug, ‘Where’s the Party? Voters’
Perceptions of Party Positions’ (doctoral 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, ‘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 fn. 14).
Secondly, indifference yields, almost by definition, randomness, which by necessity defies
scalability.
 Exploring Uncharted Territory 643

McAleese and 68 per cent 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 scale28 and their vote if there had been a general
election. Secondly, we examined the relationship between voters’ position on
the unfolded scale and their position on a 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 5 0.16 between vote and unfolded
candidate preference and r 5 0.11 between unfolded candidate preference and
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 modelled 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: H 5 0.39. Although not overwhelmingly strong, such a value is generally considered
acceptable (see fn. 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 analysed 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.
644 V A N D E R B R U G, V A N D E R E I J K A N D M A R S H

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 5 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, 2 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 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

31
On Northern Ireland see fn. 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 television 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.
 Exploring Uncharted Territory 645

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 Nally not yet

(McAleese vs. Nally) 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 fn. 13.
Note: Cell entries indicate the number of voters who 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 2 October 1997
seventy-seven 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 77 divided by 83.3.
The further the value from unity, the greater the apparent impact of the issue on which the two
candidates were divided (Northern Ireland, Abortion) or united (Competence).

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 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.
Table 2 suggests that the evaluations of presidential candidates were slightly
33
The expected numbers under statistical independence were computed with an algorithm
incorporated in MUDFOLD.
646 V A N D E R B R U G, V A N D E R E I J K A N D M A R S H

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. Nevertheless, the data do not indicate that the personal
competence of the candidates played an important role in voters’ evaluations
of all candidates, at least in so far as 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 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 struc-
tured 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, particularly the second-order perspective, were inconsistent
with our empirical observations.
Finally, we checked whether demographic or socioeconomic factors could

34
For details, see Marsh, ‘The Making of the Irish President 1997’, pp. 236–7.
 Exploring Uncharted Territory 647

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 5 0.22) but stronger than the relation with
party preference (eta 5 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 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 another good thing
that is preferred by other voters), the candidate who 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 McAleese’s
victory: she enjoyed strong support from all voters irrespective of their most
preferred position on the unfolded scale.

35
Ten 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.
648 V A N D E R B R U G, V A N D E R E I J K A N D M A R S H

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 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. Yet 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 United States, 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
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

37
For a review of work on these themes, see I. McAllister, ‘Leaders’, in LeDuc, Niemi and Norris,
Comparing Democracies, pp. 280–98.
 xploring Uncharted Territory 649

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’ argue 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.
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

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. Lodge,
K. McGraw and P. Stroh, ‘An Impression-driven Model of Candidate Evaluation’, American
Political Science Review, 83 (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(1993), 409–51.
650 V A N D E R B R U G, V A N D E R E I J K A N D M A R S H

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.

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.41

TABLE A.1 Summary Description of Main Results of MUDFOLD Analyses

Codings of Values of the H-coefficients in each wave

candidate
preferences Permutations 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th

Full rankings: DAEB 2 0.11

0, 1, 2, 3, 4 CADB * 2 0.08 0.09 0.13 0.25
0 (twice), 1, 2, 3 DAEB 2 0.11
ACED * 0.02
DACE * 0.01 0.10 0.13 0.40
0 (3 times), 1, 2 DAEB 0.12
DECB * 0.37
DACE * 0.30 0.43 0.46 0.42
0 (3 times), DAEB 2 0.09
1 (twice) ADCE * 0.26
DACE * 0.22 0.43 0.47 0.40

(A 5 Banotti, B 5 McAleese, C 5 Nally, D 5 Roche, E 5 Scallon)

* Cannot be estimated because Nally was not then a candidate

41
Van Schuur, Structure in Political Beliefs.