Nationalism and ethnic heterogeneity: The importance of local context for nationalist party vote choice

This article explores the individual-level correlates of nationalist party vote choice and the extent to which these correlates are conditioned by an individual's local context. We argue that the influence of individuals' policy positions on nationalism should vary in importance for predicting voting for nationalist parties in localities where voters feel threatened culturally or economically. To test this argument we use the case of support for the Bloc Quebecois in the Canadian province of Quebec and data from the 2011 Canadian Vote Compass. We show that voters' policy positions on nationalism become more important in predicting a vote for the Bloc Quebecois when the percentage of English speakers (our proxy for ethno-cultural threat) increases in their locality. By contrast, we find that the relationship between nationalism and support for the Bloc Quebecois is not conditioned by economic hardship in the place where an individual lives. To test the robustness of our findings, we reestimate our models using a different dataset from multiple elections – the Canadian Election Study as well as an additional modelling approach. Our findings contribute to the broader vote choice literature by examining the role that local context plays in individuals' choice of parties. Furthermore, our findings lend support to arguments made in the literature on the importance of an ethno-cultural calculus among voters voting for nationalist parties.     

Vote choices of left-authoritarians: Misperceived congruence and issue salience

Often lacking parties with a corresponding profile, citizens with economically left and culturally authoritarian, or nationalist, policy orientations face a trade-off between congruence on economic and on cultural issues. How such left-authoritarian voters resolve this trade-off depends on which issues are more salient to them, previous research argues. We extend this line of research by considering the role of (mis-)perceived party positions. Using a survey in the context of the 2017 German election, we show how perceived congruence and issue importance interactively shape the left-authoritarian vote. Our findings indicate that many left-authoritarians vote for a party simply because they misperceive it to hold a congruent left-authoritarian position. In this case, issue importance matters little. Yet when voters are aware that parties match their position on only one dimension, vote choices are shaped by whether they care most about the economy or immigration. We discuss several implications.     

Policy Voting in Senate Elections: The Case of Abortion

Questions about whether voters rely on their policy preferences when casting ballots have been present since scholars first began examining the determinants of voting behavior. This paper seeks to contribute to research in this area by analyzing abortion policy voting in Senate elections. Specifically, I investigate how the effects of national party position divergence, candidate position divergence, and voter information and salience moderate the relationship between abortion policy preferences and vote choice. The results suggest that the national parties' divergence on abortion does not directly strengthen the connection between abortion policy preferences and ballot decisions. Instead, candidate contrast appears to be the key. And, well informed and motivated voters are especially responsive. Taken together, the findings illuminate the nature of abortion policy voting and also inform the burgeoning scholarship on campaign effects, the role of information, and issue publics in American politics.     

A perfect match? The impact of statement selection on voting advice applications' ability to match voters and parties

This study examines how statement selection systematically affects the output of voting advice applications (VAAs). Does the statement selection influence how often voters are matched with parties that ‘should be’ close to them? Our benchmark is a classic account of issue voting, the proximity left–right model. We analyze the Belgian VAA Do the Vote Test and find that the output resembles the left–right model. When more left–right statements are included, more left-wing voters get the advice to vote for left-wing parties and the same is true on the right, while simultaneously advantaging parties with more extreme positions on this dimension. We also analyze issue saliency and find that parties are disadvantaged when more statements about salient issues are included. These findings imply tough choices for VAA builders.     

Ideology,Salience, and Complexity: Determinants of Policy Issue Incongruence between Voters and Parties

How come voters and their parties agree or disagree on policy issues? We claim that voter–party mismatches are due to a lack of information of voters regarding parties' positions. Three mechanisms determine levels of information: ideology, salience, and complexity. We test these ideas drawing on a large sample of policy statements (50) presented to voters and party leaders prior to regional elections in Belgium. Contrary to existing studies, we include predictors on all three levels: issue, voter, and party level. We find support for our claim. Major ideological divides such as the left–right divide yield useful information to the voters about where parties stand. Salience also generates information for voters, or makes information more accessible for voters, which decreases the odds that they have a different stance than their party. Our measures of complexity yielded the expected results too. When the task of voting is made more difficult, voters succeed less in voting for a party that matches their preferences.     

Congruence between voters and parties: The role of party-level issue salience

The level of congruence between parties and their voters can vary greatly from one policy issue to another, which raises questions regarding the effectiveness of political representation. We seek to explain variation in party–voter congruence across issues and parties. We focus on the hypotheses that (1) average proximity between the positions of voters and the party they vote for will be highest on the issues that the party emphasises in the election campaign and that (2) this relationship will be stronger for niche parties. We test these hypotheses using data on the policy preferences of voters, party positions, party attention profiles and salience on concrete policy issues in four countries: The Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and Sweden. Overall, we find that voter–party proximity tends to be higher on issues that the party emphasises. As these are the issues where parties typically have the greatest policy impact, this implies that the quality of representation is highest where it matters most. There is some limited evidence that the positive relationship between issue salience and proximity is stronger for niche parties. In sum, the quality of policy representation varies strongly with party-level issue salience and to a lesser extent with the type of political party.     

Signalling issue salience: Explaining niche party support in second-order elections

Why do many mainstream party voters switch to voting for niche parties in second-order elections? I develop a simple framework to explain niche party switching in second-order elections and propose that some voters defect strategically to niche parties as a way to signal the salience of an otherwise overlooked issue to their preferred mainstream party. Using panel data from the United Kingdom and Germany, I find that vote switching in second-order elections is more common among those who perceive a mismatch between the party they feel close to and the party perceived as best able to handle an issue of importance to them, as well as when they believe less is at stake and when they place much importance on an overlooked issue.     

Issue Voting as a Constrained Choice Problem

Prevalent models of issue voting view vote choice as a choice among party policies. Choice sets are implicitly assumed to be the same for all voters, and their composition is left to researchers' discretion. This article aims to relax such assumptions by presenting a model with a varying probability of inclusion in the choice set. We apply the “constrained choice conditional logistic regression” to survey data from the 1989 parliamentary election in Norway to examine the effects of party identification of voters and electoral viability and policy extremity of parties on individual voters' choice set compositions. Further, we look into the effect of parties' policy positions on their electoral fates under alternative assumptions about the composition of voters' choice sets. We find that voters' choice set composition conditions both the effects of their policy considerations on vote choice and those of parties' policy offerings on their electoral fates.     

Is referendum voting distinctive? Evidence from three UK cases

The study of referendum voting follows much the same format as for general election voting. Influences on vote, however, are likely to differ significantly. Referendums decide issues, while general elections determine which party or parties will form the government. Parties are often divided on referendum issues and these issues tend to be of low salience. General elections, however, are contested by long-established parties on highly salient issues. Using panel data from the British Election Study and the 2011 Alternative Vote Referendum Study, we find that voters place different weights on party identification, issue positions, government and leader evaluations when voting in general elections and referendums, but the evidence for differential campaign effects is limited.     

Voter Learning in State Primary Elections

When voters learn about candidates' issue positions during election campaigns, does it affect how they vote? This basic question about voters remains unanswered in part because of a methodological obstacle: learning candidates' issue positions may influence not only voters' vote choice but also their issue positions. To surmount this obstacle, we attempt to answer this question by examining statewide primary elections, which are arguably less vulnerable to this reverse causation problem because they lack partisan cues and are of much lower salience than presidential elections. Using both existing polling data and our own panel Internet surveys, we find that voters learn about the ideologies of candidates during statewide primary campaigns and that this learning affects their voting decisions in senate and gubernatorial primaries. We fail to find similar results for down‐ballot primaries, raising questions about voters' ability to make informed judgments for these types of elections.     

Election Campaigns,Issue Focus and Voting Intentions: Survey Experiments of Norwegian Voters

This article investigates whether and how changes in issue focus in election campaigns affect voting intention, even if no preference change takes place, and whether such effects vary systematically across different groups of voters. Evidence is reported from two survey experiments of Norwegian voters, where respondents were treated with information drawing their attention towards issues pertaining either to immigration or the environment. Although irrelevant for policy learning or persuasion, this information strongly increased the support of particular parties. More specifically, parties with ‘ownership’ of the issues involved gained votes. Certain types of voters were more likely to change voting intentions post‐treatment than others, but which types crucially depended on the issue area under focus. Nevertheless, the results indicate that the issue focus of campaigns is very important for vote choice. Hence, one should expect that, for instance, even ‘neutral’ political news coverage at or close to election day could affect voters in predictable ways. Furthermore, one should expect different parties to fight hard to steer the focus of campaigns towards issues where they have ownership.     

Conversion,Acquiescence, or Delusion: The Contingent Nature of the Party-Voter Connection

Normative theories of representative government posit congruence of opinion between the electorate and their representatives. However, not all political issues are equally salient, and agreement is expected to be greater on relatively salient issues. This paper employs balance theory to describe mechanisms which may produce congruence of opinion between voters and parties when an issue increases rapidly in salience. Panel data on Norwegian opinion during the debate on European Union membership are used to determine whether opinion congruence resulted from persuasion by political parties or policy voting by the electorate. Policy voters are found to differ systematically from voters who were persuaded by parties. Finally, the characteristics of parties which determine their success in persuading voters or attracting policy voters are evaluated.     

Multidimensional incongruence and vote switching in Europe

Does ideological incongruence hurt parties in elections? Research on the representational relationship between parties and voters suggests that ideological congruence can boost a party’s electoral prospects. However, while the mechanism is at the individual-level, most of the literature focuses on the party-level. In this article, we develop a set of hypotheses based on a multi-issue conception of party-voter congruence at the individual-level, and examine the electoral consequences of these varying congruence levels in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Consistent with our expectations, comparative analysis finds that ideological and issue-specific incongruence is a significant factor in voting behavior in the European Parliament elections. Although the substantive effects of incongruence are understandably small compared to partisanship, government, or EU performance evaluations, party-voter disagreement consistently matters, and voters’ issue salience is an important moderator of the impact of incongruence on vote choice.     

Does party rhetoric affect voter perceptions of party positions?

Do voters listen to parties? Do they pay attention to and understand parties' policy messages? We explore these questions with two studies. First, we assembled the most comprehensive cross-national dataset on media coverage of parties' rhetoric during election campaigns and show that parties’ media messages about their left-right positions significantly affect voter perceptions of these positions. We corroborate the cross-national results with panel data from the UK that allow us to more rigorously identify the party rhetoric effect and to show that it extends beyond the left-right super issue: party messages affect voter perceptions also on specific issues, such as income redistribution and European integration. Taken together, these findings suggest that voters indeed listen to parties and understand their policy messages.     

Look to Denmark or not? An experimental study of the Social Democrats’ strategic choices

Social Democratic parties struggle to maintain their strong electoral position, as political competition has shifted from the traditional left-right dimension to the cultural dimension. This has led to a debate on what would be the most viable electoral strategy for these parties in terms of adjusting their policies. Some propose a “New Left” policy platform that combines social investment and progressive cultural policies; others an “Old Left” policy platform that combines traditional redistribution policies and social-conservative cultural policies. We conducted a survey experiment to test the effects of these two platforms on support for the Norwegian Labour party. Our results show that the New Left platform is more popular among current Labour voters and voters from competing left-wing parties, and the two policy platforms are equally popular among the total electorate.     

Issue salience, issue ownership, and issue-based vote choice

According to the issue ownership theory of voting, voters identify the most credible party proponent of a particular issue and cast their ballots for that issue owner. Despite the centrality of this voter-level mechanism to ownership theories of party behavior, it has seldom been examined in the literature. We explore this model and offer a refinement to its current understanding and operationalization. Returning to the roots of ownership theory, we argue that the effect of issue ownership on vote choice is conditioned by the perceived salience of the issue in question. Through individual-level analyses of vote choice in the 1997 and 2000 Canadian federal elections, we demonstrate that issue ownership affects the voting decisions of only those individuals who think that the issue is salient.     

Intra-party heterogeneity and voter perceptions of party positions

Do voters correctly perceive left-right positions of political parties? This question received considerable attention in the literature in the past decades. Previous research has shown that most voters have somewhat ‘correct’ perceptions of where parties are located on a left-right dimension, but that both individual and party level factors influence how much those perceptions deviate from the real positions. This paper adds to this literature, relaxing the unitary actor assumption and introducing heterogeneity to the analysis. Using data from elite surveys to measure intraparty preference heterogeneity on two dimensions, I demonstrate that voters' misperceptions of party positions strongly increase the more heterogeneous the positions of party elites are on the economic dimension, but not on the sociocultural dimension, and that the effect size depends on how salient this dimension is for the party. The findings have implications for future research on mass-elite linkages, representation, as well as voting behavior.     

Turning your back on the EU. The role of Eurosceptic parties in the 2014 European Parliament elections

This paper analyses how disaffection with the EU influenced individuals' likelihood of turning out to vote and of casting a vote for a Eurosceptic party in the 2014 EP elections, and how these relationships were moderated by the Eurosceptic partisan supply of each country. We argue that the degree to which political parties oppose European integration, as well as the ideological leaning of Eurosceptic parties, should influence both the likelihood of disaffected citizens turning out to vote, and their likelihood of voting for a Eurosceptic party. Our empirical findings show that, in the presence of a party that is strongly opposed to European integration, disaffected citizens are more likely to turn out to vote and to vote for a Eurosceptic party provided that this party also shares their ideological leaning in the left-right dimension. These results indicate that Eurosceptic parties are important actors for the politicization of the European integration conflict and for the Europeanization of EP elections, but, at the same time, they suggest that opposition to European integration is subordinate to the traditional left-right conflict.     

Spatial voting in non-partisan cities: A case study

In spatial voting theory, voters choose the candidate whose policy preferences are most like their own. This requires that (a) voters and candidates have policy preferences that can be meaningfully summarized in terms of low-dimensional “ideal points” on a left-right scale; (b) voters are able to discern, either directly or through relevant cues, the ideal points of the candidates who are running for office; and (c) voters incorporate this information into the choices they make at the ballot box. Perhaps more than in any other elections, it is not clear that any of these requirements are met in non-partisan municipal elections: policy preferences may not be ideologically structured, information may be inadequate, and voters may choose candidates for reasons other than ideology. This makes non-partisan municipal elections an especially hard test for spatial voting theory. Using novel data from both municipal candidates and eligible voters in a major non-partisan municipal election in Canada, we show that municipal policy attitudes are ideologically structured and that these municipal policy ideal points are strongly related to mayoral and council vote choice. Thus, despite the institutional and informational obstacles, spatial voting can play an important role in non-partisan municipal elections.     

Voting at 16: Intended and unintended consequences of Austria's electoral reform

Several democracies are currently debating whether to lower their legal voting age to 16, but relatively little is known about the long-term consequences of such reforms. We contribute to this debate by studying electoral habit formation among 16-year-old voters in Austria, where the national-level voting age was decreased in 2007. We employ eligibility-based regression discontinuities to evaluate two consequences of the reform. First, we show that eligible 16-year-olds are more likely to vote in future elections. Second, we demonstrate that the political consequences of this reform were not neutral. Newly eligible young voters are more likely to place themselves towards the extremes of the ideological spectrum. We also simulate the cumulative long-term impact on electoral outcomes and argue that the reform was costly for the centrist government parties that initially adopted it.