LOCAL ELECTIONS

Denmark woke up to a new landscape this morning, the sight of lots of serious faces staring down at the population from lampposts. There are local elections here next month, and today marks the start of the formal campaign.

Most countries' election campaigns involve posters of one form or another. What marks out Danish campaigns are that these posters are nearly always pictures of the candidates, with simply their name and party letter (A for Social Democrats, B for the Radicals, C for the Conservatives etc) plastered underneath. Midnight last night was the legal start time for the campaign, so party workers spent most of the night bagging the best spots (on a first come, first served basis) and shinning up lampposts. As soon as the elections have taken place, there is a fixed time limit during which they all have to be taken down again.

Academics have done research on whether all this activity in fact has an electoral effect. The answer is in national elections no, in local elections yes. In national elections there is so much other media coverage (notably television) that a local picture of, say, Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has virtually zero influence on whether someone will vote for her or not. In local elections, on the other hand, the posters may well be the only way in which local people get to know who exactly is standing in their local area. This matters since election can be achieved either through personal or party votes; someone low down on the party list who would otherwise not be elected can, therefore, leapfrog up the list and be elected if they can harvest enough personal votes.

In some countries (the U.K., for instance) local elections are almost irrelevant, since local authorities have no real power. In Denmark they do, kommuner being able (for instance) to set the income tax rate. So knowing who is standing is important. Taking pretty pictures and shinning up lampposts is, therefore, worth doing.

Walter Blotscher