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This article examines politicians' changes of party labels during the life of a legislature. The authors view a legislator's choice of party as a strategic decision recurring throughout the parliamentary cycle. In their approach, individuals are open to switching parties as they pursue goals specific to the stage in the parliamentary cycle. Analyzing Italy and Russia, they identify among legislators in both countries patterns of heightened switching for office benefits, policy advantage, and vote seeking at distinctive moments in the parliamentary cycle. The commonalities across the two systems provide compelling support for their theoretical framework. The evidence also points to a midterm peak in switching in both countries. Differences appear, however, in the timing of pre-electoral positioning-contrasts that the authors attribute to differences in the degree of party system institutionalization, the age of the democratic regimes, and thus the information available to players in electoral politics. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2008.]

A before-after (election) series of telephone interviews of registered voters in 4 areas of the US was done in the week of the 1964 Presidential election. The purposes were: (1) To measure voting turnout among those persons who were exposed to firm broadcast computer predictions of a Johnson victory, such exposure coming before these persons' intended time of voting. (2) To measure whether any signif vote switching occurred as a function of this same sort of early exposure to predictions of victory; (vote switching was defined as a diff between pre-election statement of candidate preference & post-election statement of vote). The results showed that turnout of registered persons was about 96%; official figures in all the sample areas showed lower turnout than this, & it seems that their inclusion of moved & decreased registrants reduced turnout artifactually. Re the effects of the pre-poll-closing broadcast predictions of a Johnson win, there seemed to be little if any effect on either reducing turnout or in inducing vote switching. Negative results were obtained in measurements of both the presidential & senatorial (& Washington gubernatorial) elections. AA.

AbstractThis paper investigates why some legislators tend to switch parties frequently – which is believed to undermine effective representation of citizen interests in democracies – while others tend to stay put. On the assumption that the ultimate goal of legislators is to be reelected, I argue that voters' demands for local/individual benefits, or pork, and legislators' lack of access to resources for such benefits are likely to lead the legislators to switch parties in order to improve their electoral chances in the subsequent election. By analyzing party switches by legislators from 1988 to 2008 in South Korea, where the president controls access to the pork pipeline, I find that the president's party members are less likely and independents are more likely to change party affiliations, irrespective of voter demands for pork or national public policies. However, I also find that opposition party legislators who are elected from less-developed districts, where voters tend to desire pork over policy, are more likely to switch parties than those elected from more-developed districts. These findings suggest that interaction between voter demands and party access to resources influences politicians' party loyalty: voter demands for pork (or policy) tend to lead politicians to be less (or more) loyal to their current parties. Voter demands, however, have little impact on the party loyalty of those who are already in parties with access to the pork pipeline.

The notion of 'voter heterogeneity' - that different voters decide according to different sets of choice criteria - has become widely accepted. But while in a given election some voters are candidate-oriented and others are issue-oriented, little is known about the temporal dimension of heterogeneity: are candidate voters at t1 also candidate voters at t2? We argue that individual voters' motivations can change over time and expect that the extent of inter- as well as intra-individual heterogeneity impacts the process of individual decision-making. Using panel data collected in the run-up to the German Federal Election 2009 we demonstrate that certain choice motivations and intra-individual changes in these motivations lead to later vote decisions and contribute to the explanation of vote switching. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

This article examines how voters attribute credit and blame to governments for policy success and failure, and how this affects their party support. Using panel data from Britain between 1997 and 2001 and Ireland between 2002 and 2007 to model attribution, the interaction between partisanship and evaluation of performance is shown to be crucial. Partisanship resolves incongruities between party support and policy evaluation through selective attribution: favoured parties are not blamed for policy failures and less favoured ones are not credited with policy success. Furthermore, attributions caused defections from Labour over the 1997–2001 election cycle in Britain, and defections from the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat coalition over the 2002–07 election cycle in Ireland. Using models of vote switching and controlling for partisanship to minimize endogeneity problems, it is shown that attributed evaluations affect vote intention much more than unattributed evaluations. This result holds across several policy areas and both political systems.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether legislators vote in two distinct regimes as suggested by the US political system & whether these voting patterns can be explained by economic variables. The paper exploits US Roll-Call votes from a rich unbalanced panel data set of 540 legislative positions over 104 congressional sessions & presidents since the Korean War. The paper employs a variant of the Hamilton Regime-Switching Model (1989) to uncover three major patterns in the data. There appear to be two distinct regimes closely related though not identical to the two-party system. Shifts in these regimes are most frequent in presidential elections & are less frequent in the Senate & the House. Finally, since WWII, economic variables do not seem to influence the shifts implying that these political shocks are exogenous. However, over longer horizons, recessions do tend to force political change in the legislature. 7 Tables, 5 Figures, 33 References. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines how voters attribute credit and blame to governments for policy success and failure, and how this affects their party support. Using panel data from Britain between 1997 and 2001 and Ireland between 2002 and 2007 to model attribution, the interaction between partisanship and evaluation of performance is shown to be crucial. Partisanship resolves incongruities between party support and policy evaluation through selective attribution: favoured parties are not blamed for policy failures and less favoured ones are not credited with policy success. Furthermore, attributions caused defections from Labour over the 1997-2001 election cycle in Britain, and defections from the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrat coalition over the 2002-07 election cycle in Ireland. Using models of vote switching and controlling for partisanship to minimize endogeneity problems, it is shown that attributed evaluations affect vote intention much more than unattributed evaluations. This result holds across several policy areas and both political systems. Adapted from the source document.

Contemporary research on electoral volatility often focuses on those who switch party preferences, but the switching itself does not inform us about who is available for electoral competition among the parties. Making use of the party preferences of the voters of different parties, we examine voter availability (i.e., the degree of availability of the voter to the electoral competition), the degree that the voter is likely to be persuaded by the different parties. The goal of this research is to answer two main questions: What are the factors that explain voter availability on an individual level? What are the factors that explain voter availability on a country level? To answer these questions, regression analyses are employed on the individual and aggregate levels as well as in a multi-level context where both levels are considered, simultaneously. ; TARA (Trinity?s Access to Research Archive) has a robust takedown policy. Please contact us if you have any concerns: rssadmin@tcd.ie

AbstractThis article addresses the overlooked subject of party switching in the Canadian House of Commons for the period 1945–2011. We estimate a model that explores how and why MPs engage in the otherwise risky behaviour of abandoning their party labels in a system characterized by a low personal vote. Our findings suggest that the electoral consequences for MPs who switch parties for policy reasons are indistinguishable from MPs who do not switch at all. By contrast, MPs who switch parties for office-related reasons, such as to accept a seat in cabinet or vote-related reasons, experience large electoral penalties. We also find that MPs who are expelled from caucus face the strongest electoral penalties of all party switchers, indicating it matters whether an MP jumps or is pushed. Our findings suggest that voters recognize opportunistic behaviour among their legislators and punish them accordingly and that under some circumstances, party switching may be both strategic and rational.

One of the defining characteristics of India in the 1990s has been high level of electoral volatility at the national level. However, this aggregate picture masks competing dynamics at the state level. Different states show markedly different patterns. Using survey data from the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, this paper shows that volatility can be explained by three inter-linked factors: the party system format, the politicisation of social cleavages, & the extent to which these cleavages are polarised. The combined impact of these factors has a strong impact on volatility, both when measured in terms of vote-switching between parties & vote-switching between alliances. 9 Tables, 5 Figures, 25 References. [Copyright 2004 Elsevier Ltd.]

Attempts to analyze the reasons for vote switching between consecutive elections have generally been disappointing. On the one hand, this result may be attributed to idiosyncrasies of vote switching; on the other hand, it may be a product of inadequate research strategies. This paper explores the second possibility. First, we suggest studying switchers not as a whole, but by distinguishing different groups of switchers according to the political relevance of the different kinds of switching. Secondly, we discuss whether analysis of switching could benefit from the use of panel data instead of cross-sectional data: the operationalization of switching by panel data should be superior to the widely used recall method. The hypotheses derived in the theoretical discussion receive strong support from empirical evidence from the German general election of 1998: both the differentiated measurement of switchers & the use of panel data enhance analysis of switching based on cleavage theory & the Michigan model. More generally, we conclude that our understanding of this dynamic element in electoral politics depends on the methodological adequacy of research. 6 Tables, 1 Figure, 78 References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractWhen do voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice‐versa? To understand these switches, we focus on the saturation of the party system. We theorize that when a party system is oversaturated – i.e. when a higher effective number of parties contests elections than predicted based on socio‐political contextual characteristics (the system's 'carrying capacity') – it becomes increasingly likely that: (1) mainstream party voters defect to niche parties; and (2) niche party voters refrain from switching to mainstream parties. Based on vote‐switching patterns in 15 countries and 53 elections, we find that oversaturation increases shifts from mainstream to niche parties. Further analyses show that this holds for shifts from mainstream to radical left and right parties, but not for shifts to green parties. This has important consequences for research on vote switching, the electoral consequences of policy differentiation and the competition between niche and mainstream parties.

In a relatively recent paper, Gehrig and Stenbacka (Eur Econ Rev 51, 77-99, 2007) show that information sharing increases banks' profits to the detriment of creditworthy entrepreneurs in a model of a banking duopoly with switching costs and poaching. They restrict their analysis to the case in which adverse selection is not too strong.We analyze the complementary case and show that, when the economy suffers from strong adverse selection, information sharing still increases banks' profits, but it may or may not hurt talented entrepreneurs.

Stemming from ambition theory, a vast body of studies has demonstrated how politicians' pursuits of different goals can explain their behaviors. Among other goals, politicians strive for re‐election or to attain a better office. However, little is known about the way politicians prioritize these goals. This article uses the phenomenon of legislative party switching to address this void and examines how hierarchy between goals determines legislator strategies. The study exploits the 2008 Romanian electoral reform, which rendered the electoral system more candidate centered. Drawing on data from more than 3,900 individual‐level observations over the period from 1996 to 2012, this article shows how vote incentives alter the trade‐offs between re‐election and office motivations. The findings suggest that politicians will pursue office goals only if the goal of re‐election is to be achieved.

Abstract
Zambia experienced its third electoral turnover in the 2021 election. While the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) lost votes across the territory, the electoral collapse in urban Zambia was particularly remarkable. This paper argues that economic performance voting can explain urban party switching in Zambia. The argument is supported by a unique panel survey of Zambian voters in the period 2019–2022. We show that urban voters were more likely to desert the PF, even when we control for ethnicity. We also show that they were more likely to evaluate the economy poorly and more likely to change their electoral preferences in view of such poor economic evaluation. Our results stress that African elections should not be understood as static expressions of stable political cleavages but may function as real opportunities for political accountability. However, the extent to which voters are willing to re-evaluate their vote choice varies across space.