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Speaking up to stay in parliament: the electoral importance of speeches and other parliamentary activities

ABSTRACT In flexible-list proportional representation systems, where voters are allowed to cast candidate preference votes, parties have much control over which candidates win seats. The influence of both party ballot rankings and preference votes, begs the question of whether more active legislators who seek reelection are rewarded by voters. We test this question by analyzing the effects of different types of parliamentary activities on preference votes for four legislative terms of the Czech Chamber of Deputies. Our study differs from most of the previous literature which typically focuses on a single parliamentary term or compares single parliamentary terms across countries. While the relationships between some activities and preference votes vary across the legislative periods, we observe consistency in the positive relationship between frequency of speaking in parliament and preference vote shares. The more sessions legislators speak in, the higher their share of preference votes in the following election.