Show Your Flag or Be Everyone's Friend?: The Effects of District Magnitude on Vote-Securing Strategies

In this paper, we argue that a difference in district magnitude—the number of seats per district—causes variation in electoral competition. We show that in the Single-Member District with Plurality voting (SMDP) system, voters may cast their ballots using the candidate’s “visual cues�?—this is particularly notable when voters cannot rely on party labels. We quantify the candidate’s smile in a replicable form by using automated facial recognition technology. Using data from local assembly elections in an urban area in Japan, we showed how a candidate’s smile, the proxy of the candidate’s visual, is effective in gathering floating votes in SMDP, but it does not increase the vote share in Multi-Member Districts with Single Non-Transferable Voting (MMDs/SNTV) system.