Candidates, votes, outcomes: A method for evaluating nomination strategies in MMD/SNTV electoral systems

While characterized by disagreement, all scholarly work on multimember district electoral systems in which each voter casts a single, nontransferable vote (MMD/SNTV) is alike in one way: it evaluates party nominations under the assumption that votes are invariant under alternative strategies. But party votes may, in fact, vary with different nomination strategies. Moreover, depending on how much party votes vary under alternative nomination strategies, a method that considers such changes may evaluate nominations differently than previous studies in the literature have. In this article, I address party-vote variance, proposing a method that estimates how much a party's obtained votes change under alternative nomination strategies and using this method to reevaluate the nominating behavior of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party.