Fighting over friends and neighbors: The effect of inter-candidate geographic distance on intra-party competition

Previous studies on intra-party competition have largely neglected the role played by geographic distance between co-partisan candidates. In this study, we argue that candidates who live further away from intra-party competitors on the same party list benefit electorally from their remoteness. Moreover, we contend that the electoral effectiveness of exhibiting local personal vote attributes - a theoretically and empirically well-established candidate strategy to cultivate personal votes - also depends on the geographical proximity of localized co-partisan candidates. Using a unique and untapped dataset of more than 5,000 Finnish election candidates' home address coordinates over four consecutive parliamentary elections (1999-2011), we run beta regression models to examine the effects of candidate remoteness and nearest candidates' local characteristics on intra-party vote shares. To measure the remoteness of a particular candidate, we develop a novel index based on the distribution of co-partisans over concentric circles around that candidate. The empirical analyses show that the effect of geographic remoteness depends on local party strength and the degree of urbanization: candidates particularly benefit from more distant co-partisans in party strongholds and rural and suburban municipalities. Moreover, all models confirm that nearby located localized co-partisans decrease a candidate's own vote share. These findings have important implications for politicians' careers, party nomination strategies and future empirical research on intra-party competition.