Data for: Active and Passive: Two Ways Party Systems Influence Electoral Outcomes

Parties can not only actively adjust the electoral rules to reach more favourable outcomes, as is recognized in political science, but they also passively create an environment that systematically influences electoral competition. This so far neglected link is theorized and successfully tested on two out of three contextual factors related to party systems: (a) choice set size (i.e. number of options provided to voters), (b) degree of ideological polarization, and (c) the presence of a populist subject. The research utilizes established datasets (i.e. Constituency-Level Elections Archive, Party System Polarization Index, Chapel Hill Expert Survey, The Manifestos Project Database, and registries of populist parties from other studies) and via OLS regression analysis concludes that the choice set size and presence of a populist subject are attributes with passive influence over electoral systems. Thus, they must be reflected when outcomes of electoral systems are estimated or compared across various contexts.