Legislators’ accountability for issue stances: evidence from Australia’s Marriage Law Postal Survey

For legislators to be held accountable for their stances voters needto sanction unpopular positions. However, because of strong partydiscipline it is difficult to identify the effects of individual MPs’stances rather than the stance of their party, because MPs almostalways have the same stance as their party. Researchers musttherefore study issues which cut across parties or where partiesallowed representatives to follow their conscience. Same-sexmarriage is one such issue. We use data from the 2017 marriagelaw survey and subsequent 2019 federal election results to testwhether MPs whose referendum positions were out-of-step withtheir district faced electoral sanction. We find that a standarddeviation increase in congruence at the level of the polling placecatchment area yields a statistically and substantively insignificantchange in vote share of −0.1 percentage points. The resultsquestion the degree to which electors control their representativesbeyond voting for a party label