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This article proposes and applies a unified model of economic voting. The central claim of this article is that economic judgments affect the decision of whether to vote as well as how to vote. An analysis of cross-national survey data supports this claim, demonstrating that previous studies of economic voting have failed to identify the full relationship by omitting abstention. In addition, the analyses support a refined version of the clarity of responsibility hypothesis, showing that institutional clarity moderates the strength and nature of economic voting, with little evidence of vote-switching among parties in low-clarity settings. These findings suggest that students of voting behavior should give greater attention to the relationship between the decisions of whether and how to vote. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2008.]

This article proposes and applies a unified model of economic voting. The central claim of this article is that economic judgments affect the decision of whether to vote as well as how to vote. An analysis of cross-national survey data supports this claim, demonstrating that previous studies of economic voting have failed to identify the full relationship by omitting abstention. In addition, the analyses support a refined version of the clarity of responsibility hypothesis, showing that institutional clarity moderates the strength and nature of economic voting, with little evidence of vote-switching among parties in low-clarity settings. These findings suggest that students of voting behavior should give greater attention to the relationship between the decisions of whether and how to vote.

AbstractScholars have investigated the characteristics of volatile voters ever since the first voter surveys were carried out and they have paid specific attention to the role of political sophistication on vote switching. Nevertheless, the exact nature of this relationship is still unclear. With increasing volatility over the past decades this question has furthermore grown in relevance. Is the growing unpredictability of elections mostly driven by sophisticated voters making well‐considered choices or is the balance of power in the hands of unsophisticated 'floating voters'? Several scholars have argued that even under conditions of increasing volatility switching is still mostly confined to changes to ideologically close parties. Most researchers, however, have used rather crude measures to investigate this 'leap' between parties. To advance research in this field, this article directly models the ideological distance bridged by volatile voters when investigating the link between political sophistication and volatility. This is done using Comparative Study of Electoral systems (CSES) data that encompass a broad sample of recent parliamentary elections worldwide. Results indicate that voters with an intermediate level of political knowledge are most likely to switch overall. When taking into account the ideological distance of party switching, however, the confining impact of political knowledge on the vote choices made is clearly dominant, resulting in a linear decrease of the distance bridged as voters become more knowledgeable.

AbstractFederal elections between 2008 and 2019 saw a great of volatility in Quebec, with important consequences for election outcomes. The surge in New Democratic Party (NDP) support in Quebec led the party to official opposition, while Liberal gains in 2011 led the party to a majority government, and Bloc Québécois gains in 2019 helped to reduce the Liberals to a minority. To what extent was this volatility driven by voters switching parties and to what degree was it driven by voters entering and exiting the electorate? This article uses ecological inference based on riding-level data to examine the dynamics of party competition in Quebec from 2008 to 2019. We show that while voter mobilization mattered to volatility, vote switching was the important driver of changing party fortunes during this period.

Do voters who feel close to mainstream parties shift to niche parties in European Parliament elections when they perceive the latter to be the most competent? And to what extent do mainstream-voters switch to niche parties to signal the importance of niche issues, such as the environment and immigration? Using data from the 2019 European Election Study (EES) Voter Study, the present research aims at answering the aforementioned questions. The results demonstrate that perceiving a mismatch between a mainstream party one feel close to and a niche party one considers to be the best at handling the most important issue leads mainstream-voters to shift to niche parties in the European stage. Additionally, many electors switch to niche parties in European Parliament elections to signal the importance of niche issues - particularly, the environment and immigration - to mainstream parties. ; Em que medida eleitores que se sentem próximos de partidos "mainstream" mudam o seu voto para partidos de nicho em eleições para o Parlamento Europeu quando os percecionam como mais competentes? E até que ponto eleitores de partidos "mainstream" votam em partidos de nicho para sinalizarem a importância de "issues" de nicho, como o ambiente e a imigração? Suportado em dados do European Election Study (2019) Voter Study, o presente trabalho visa responder a estas questões. Os resultados apresentam evidência de que reconhecer um "mismatch" entre o partido "mainstream" de que um indivíduo se sente mais próximo e o partido de nicho que considera mais competente leva eleitores de partidos "mainstream" a mudarem o seu voto para partidos de nicho no palco europeu. Adicionalmente, em eleições para o Parlamento Europeu, parte do eleitorado vota em partidos de nicho para sinalizar a importância de "issues" de nicho - em particular, ambiente e imigração - aos partidos "mainstream".

Examining the German case in the wider Western European context for the period 1996–2017, the chapter investigates the role of supply and demand factors for vote switching in general and switching to right-wing populist parties in particular. Combining survey data from the CSES with party data from the Manifesto Project, the chapter shows that the growing success of right-wing populist parties, in Germany just as in other Western European countries, was a response to programmatic moves of mainstream center-left and center-right parties to the left. In general, voters' movements between parties did not follow a symmetric pattern. Changes to parties further left came about as responses to increasing voter-party distances on the socio-economic dimension. In the more recent past, switches to parties further right and, in particular, right-wing populist parties like the German AfD became more frequent, and they were associated with increasing distances on the socio-cultural dimension. ; The open access publication of the edited volume "The Changing German Voter" was financially supported by the Leibniz Association's Open Access Publication Fund for Monographs, the University of Mannheim, and the DGfW.

In 2012 Catalan politics came to a standstill, and a push for independence was triggered by a huge pro-independence rally. That push led, in 2017, to the Spanish government taking over the Catalan government, and top Catalan officials either going into exile or being jailed, tried, and convicted for sedition in 2019. This article investigates how Catalans switched their vote between the elections held shortly before and just after that 2012 rally, with a novel ecological inference approach that groups geographical areas based on the similarity/switching of vote patterns and estimates the vote-switch patterns for individuals in each group. This approach allows one to map how individual vote-switch patterns vary in space and estimate how the support for parties in favour and against independence shifted between these two elections. ; Postprint (published version)

This article assesses the effects of deliberation and increased political knowledge on vote choice. The observed knowledge gains result from participation in a deliberative experiment in the context of second-order elections, which facilitates realistic estimates of information gains that can be expected if citizens were politically more engaged than they actually are. Using survey data on 333 participants in the deliberative experiment and 729 respondents from a control group, we find that deliberation is associated with significant changes in vote choice. Specifically, participating in the deliberative event is related to an increased likelihood of vote switching in favour of Green parties. However, there is no support for the expectation that changes in citizens' party choices are related to the observed increase in political knowledge.

Ethno-regional voting cleavages have featured in a number of sub-Saharan African states during the third wave of democratization. While these voting patterns are well studied, there have been few attempts to understand if pan-ethno-regional coalition building based on targeted economic policies can be employed to secure national electoral coalitions. We examine the 2009 Malawian parliamentary elections where a newly-formed national party used its incumbent position to promote an economic policy based on food security in order to overcome traditional ethno-regional voting patterns. After presenting a formal model of an optimal allocation of an economic resource to induce vote-switching, we use district-level data in a system of equations approach finding that this strategic allocation did indeed contribute to the nation-wide electoral victory. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

The paper contrasts two notions of the floating voter: the "modern floating voter" and the "frustrated floating voter". In doing so, social modernization is contrasted with macro stimuli as explanations of volatility. The "modern floating voter" emerges from social dealignment theories. These claim (1) an increase in volatility, (2) more frequent vote switching among the well educated and the new middle class, and (3) an instrumental view of politics among floating voters. Empirical tests on German data do not deliver any support for these dealignment hypotheses (employing log-linear models on cross-sectional and pooled-cross-sectional data and ANOVA). On the other hand, the model of the "frustrated floating voter", which denotes vote switching that takes place in a mood of protest, receives some support in the data. Thus, the degree of political dissatisfaction of an electorate emerges as a potential predictor of volatility. In a final step, I test if the drop in political satisfaction between 1990 and 1993 can he attributed to social change, thus indicating an indirect effect of social change on volatility. The data do not support this hypothesis. The drop in satisfaction (and thus the potential increase in volatility) most likely should be attributed to macro stimuli. Thus, the results indicate that macro phenomena (which might be historic events, economic conditions, or the like) might be more fruitful in explaining volatility than social modernization. (European Journal of Political Research / AuD)

The second-order election (SOE) model as originally formulated by Reif and Schmitt (1980) suggests that, relative to the preceding first-order election result, turnout is lower in SOEs, government and big parties lose, and small and ideologically extreme parties win. These regularities are not static but dynamic and related to the first-order electoral cycle. These predictions of the SOE model have often been tested using aggregate data. The fact that they are based on individual-level hypotheses has received less attention. The main aim of this article is to restate the micro-level hypotheses for the SOE model and run a rigorous test for the 2004 and 2014 European elections. Using data from the European Election Studies voter surveys, our analysis reveals signs of sincere, but also strategic abstentions in European Parliament elections. Both strategic and sincere motivations are also leading to SOE defection. It all happens at once.

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 preelectoral 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.