Using Name Standardisation to Track Candidate and MP Performance over Time in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This paper makes use of data from the Papua New Guinea Election Results Database. It draws on an exercise in which we standardised the spelling of candidate names to allow for intertemporal analysis. Our central research questions included: whether the share of more experienced MPs in Papua New Guinea’s parliament has increased; whether MPs who have been in power longer are more or less likely to be re-elected than newer MPs; whether the typical first-time winner in the 2012 and 2017 elections had a long history of previous candidacies; and whether women candidates perform better over time if they stand in multiple elections. We found no trend of increasing MP experience. We found third term MPs were less likely to be re-elected than first and second term, but fourth-term MPs were more likely to be re-elected. We found that, typically, winners in 2012 and 2017 had not stood many times prior to victory. And we found that female candidates tend to perform worse on average the more times they stand, although there is considerable variation amongst different candidates.

Keywords: Papua New Guinea, Elections, PNG, Melanesia, Politics