On a Short Leash? Sub-National Party Positions between Regional Context and National Party Unity

Do sub-national parties reproduce the programmatic orientation of the party as a whole? Or are they able to adjust their programmatic orientation to their sub-national electorate? I seek to answer these questions based on the policy positions of German sub-national parties and survey data on voters' positions. Referring to these very similar parties – which all have to commit themselves to certain policy positions in the run-up to state elections – allows for a controlled analysis of sub-national parties' autonomy. The analyses reveal that the regional context does play a role; voters' preferences and the unemployment rate appear to influence the dynamics of party positions. However, the results also show that regional branches of the same party change their positions in a similar way and also seek not to distance themselves too far from the national party line. This indicates that German sub-national parties appear first and foremost to be regional party branches of national parties.     

Does context matter – The impact of electoral systems,political parties and individual characteristics on voters' perceptions of party positions

This article aims to investigate under which circumstances policy representation can exist in terms of agreement in voters' perceptions of parties' left–right positions. The focal point in the study is on how voters' perceptions are affected not only by individual characteristics but also by various contextual factors related to the political parties and the political systems. With data from the CSES on individual voters and various system characteristics from election surveys in 32 countries, this article shows that what in earlier findings have appeared as national context effects rather are party effects when being decomposed. System related variables have only a small impact on voters' perceptions while the party- followed by the individually related variables exerted the greatest impact.     

Testing Islam's Political Advantage: Evidence from Indonesia

Across the Muslim world, Islamic political parties and social organizations have capitalized upon economic grievances to win votes and popular support. But existing research has been unable to disentangle the role of Islamic party ideology from programmatic economic appeals and social services in explaining these parties' popular support. We argue that Islamic party platforms function as informational shortcuts to Muslim voters, and only confer a political advantage when voters are uncertain about parties' economic policies. Using a series of experiments embedded in an original nationwide survey in Indonesia, we find that Islamic parties are systematically more popular than otherwise identical non‐Islamic parties only under cases of economic policy uncertainty. When respondents know economic policy platforms, Islamic parties never have an advantage over non‐Islamic parties. Our findings demonstrate that Islam's political advantage is real, but critically circumscribed by parties' economic platforms and voters' knowledge of them.     

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.     

Estimating parties' left-right positions: Determinants of voters' perceptions' proximity to party ideology

The article aims to explore whether the accuracy of voters' perceptions of party ideology are affected by party position shifts and by the media's turn to non-left-right issues, such as political leadership, during election campaigns. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) and a country-specific left-right index based on data by the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP), multilevel analyses reveal that emphasizing leadership issues can lead voters to reflect left-right positions more accurately. A party's left-right position shift between elections does not lead to a significant difference in voters' perceptions, while a shift on the economic sub-dimension of left-right ideology can even lead voters to more position clarity. However, multiple parties' shifting their positions seems to overburden respondents' cognitive capacity.     

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.     

How voters' perceptions of junior coalition partners depend on the prime minister's position

Recent studies document that voters infer parties' left‐right policy agreement based on governing coalition arrangements. This article extends this research to present theoretical and empirical evidence that European citizens update their perceptions of junior coalition partners' left‐right policies to reflect the policies of the prime minister's party, but that citizens do not reciprocally project junior coalition partners' policies onto the prime minister's party. These findings illuminate the simple rules that citizens employ to infer parties' policy positions, broaden understanding of how citizens perceive coalition governance and imply that ‘niche’ parties, whose electoral appeal depends upon maintaining a distinctive policy profile, assume electoral risks when they enter government.     

Simulation Analysis of the Effect of Party Identification on Finnish Parties' Optimal Positions

The Finnish National Election Study of 2003 revealed that most voters in Finland do not identify with parties and are self‐described as independents. In this article it is asserted that partisan attachments affect Finnish parties' optimal positions despite the large amount of independents. To show this, the article is divided in two parts. In the first part, voters' decisions are assumed to be deterministic. To show the effect of party identification under deterministic voting, two different types of simulations are conducted: the partisan type, where the partisans' voting behaviour depends on their distance from the party and on a degree of partisan attachment, and the apartisan type, where voting behaviour depends solely on policy issue distance. Results show that partisan attachments drive parties to adopt different ‘one‐off’ optimal positions than they would if party competition was solely based on policy issue distance. In the second part of the article, it is assumed that voters' decisions are probabilistic. Upon showing that party identification makes a voting model solely based on distance significantly more fit, the predicted probabilities of party choice are computed. Results indicate that the probability that a voter will vote for a party is higher when the party is located at its optimal position according to the partisan type of simulations rather than the apartisan one.     

Feelings about party leaders as a voter's heuristic – what happens when the leaders change? A note

Recent analyses of voting at British general elections deploy a valence theory according to which electors evaluate each party's performance and policies and vote accordingly. Many voters, however, avoid at least some of the effort involved in assembling and assessing information about parties' policies and instead use heuristics such as their feelings about the party leaders as major determinants of their decisions. When party leaders are changed, therefore, differences in voters' feelings about predecessor and successor could lead to changes in party choice. That argument is tested for the 2015 and 2017 British general elections in England, between which all three largest parties changed their leader, with results entirely consistent with the argument. In addition, there were significant changes in feelings about the new party leaders during the six weeks of the 2017 campaign, and these too were linked to final voting choices in the expected directions.     

Mass Media and Party Divergence in Multiparty Systems

Does the mass media affect the dispersion of the policy positions of political parties? In this article it is argued that the mass media polarize parties' policy positions because vote‐seeking strategies are more viable if party policy positions are clearly communicated to the electorate and because a vote‐seeking strategy corresponds with parties taking a distinct policy position away from the median. Hence, the main hypothesis is that party policy position dispersion is larger with more mass media penetration. In order to test this argument, a novel dataset on party positions and mass media penetration in 267 Danish municipalities in 2004 is utilized and a new measure of the dispersion of policy positions in multiparty systems is constructed. The analysis corroborates the article's main hypothesis.     

Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Electoral Consequences of Western European Parties' Policy Shifts, 1976–1998

Do “niche” parties—such as Communist, Green, and extreme nationalist parties—adjust their policies in response to shifts in public opinion? Would such policy responsiveness enhance these parties' electoral support? We report the results of statistical analyses of the relationship between parties' policy positions, voters' policy preferences, and election outcomes in eight Western European democracies from 1976 to 1998 that suggest that the answer to both questions is no . Specifically, we find no evidence that niche parties responded to shifts in public opinion, while mainstream parties displayed consistent tendencies to respond to public opinion shifts. Furthermore, we find that in situations where niche parties moderated their policy positions they were systematically punished at the polls (a result consistent with the hypothesis that such parties represent extreme or noncentrist ideological clienteles), while mainstream parties did not pay similar electoral penalties. Our findings have important implications for political representation, for spatial models of elections, and for political parties' election strategies.     

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.     

The effects of alternative power-sharing arrangements: Do “moderating” institutions moderate party strategies and government policy outputs?

Advocates of consensual political institutions, i.e. institutions that promote compromise and powersharing among political parties, claim that these institutions promote moderation in government policy outputs. To date, however, there exists little research – either theoretical or empirical – that evaluates whether consensual institutions promote moderation in parties' policy declarations. We develop a multiparty spatial model with policy-seeking parties operating under proportional representation, in which we vary the extent to which government policies reflect power-sharing among all parties as opposed to being determined by a single party. We determine parties' optimal (Nash equilibrium) policy positions and conclude that power-sharing does not typically motivate parties to moderate their policy declarations; in fact, policy positioning under power-sharing appears to be similar to or more extreme than under single-party dominance. Consistent with previous research, however, we find that power-sharing does promote moderation in government policy outputs. Our results have implications for parties’ election strategies, for the design of political institutions, and for representative government.     

Voter perceptions of coalition policy positions in multiparty systems

A growing body of research shows how voters consider coalition formation and policy compromises at the post-electoral stage when making vote choices. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how voters perceive policy positions of coalition governments. Using new survey data from the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES), we study voter perceptions of coalition policy platforms. We find that voters do in general have reasonable expectations of the coalitions' policy positions. However, partisan beliefs and uncertainty affect how voters perceive coalition positions: in addition to projection biases similar to those for individual party placements, partisans of coalition parties tend to align the position of the coalition with their own party's policy position, especially for those coalitions they prefer the most. In contrast, there is no consistent effect of political knowledge on the voters' uncertainty when evaluating coalition policy positions.     

The fact remains: Party ID moderates how voters respond to economic change

Recent research suggests that party identification biases voters' economic perceptions in general, but that all voters respond to economic change at the same rate. This implies that voters update their economic perceptions in parallel and are able to hold governments to account. But this has two problems. First, it contradicts evidence of partisan-motivated information processing. Second, parallel-updating does not imply unbiased information processing and is normatively less appealing than if partisans' economic perceptions were to converge at economic extremes. In this article, I argue instead that party identification does moderate how voters' economic perceptions respond to economic change. I test my argument on data from one ordinary and one extraordinary period in Britain's recent economic history using competing Bayesian multilevel ordered-logit models. I show that economic change does lead to changes in voters' economic perceptions. But I also show that party identification moderates this process. As such, voters update their economic perceptions along separate, not parallel, paths.     

The Issue Agenda,Party Competence and Popularity: An Empirical Analysis of Austria 1989–2004

This article analyses the effects of the issue agenda and of party competence on party popularity. Based on the salience and the issue ownership literatures, shifts in party support may be attributable to two factors: changing voter perceptions of issue salience and shifts in perceived party competence. We thus hypothesize that (1) a party's popularity increases if the public issue agenda changes in its favour such that its “best” issues become more important to voters and (2) that voters' changing perceptions of party competence account for shifting party popularity. Using annual macro data on voter perceptions of the issue agenda, party competence and popularity in Austria, we find no support for the first hypothesis. Rather, voter perceptions of party issue competence vary considerably and this variation accounts for the parties' level of popular support. This suggests that party competition plays out more by what politicians actually do and what impression they give about their deeds and competence than by exercising influence on the issue agenda.     

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.     

The more the better? Cumulative issue ownership and intra-campaign party switching

We contribute to the literature on short term changes in voters' party preferences (or intra-campaign party switching), by advancing a factor that has been neglected so far: Voters' perceptions about parties' issue competence. We develop a model of party switching that includes both classic predictors and issue ownership considerations. Moreover, in contrast to the usual single issue ownership conception focusing on the party deemed most competent to solve the most important problem, we argue that voters base their party choice on their perceptions of parties' competence on a variety of issues, i.e. on cumulative issue ownership. We test our model on panel data from the 2015 Swiss election study. The change in competence perceptions appears as a strong predictor of party switching: The higher the increase in the number of issues on which voters see a party as most competent during the campaign, the higher their likelihood to switch to that party.     

Is there a friends-and-neighbors effect for party leaders?

The friends-and-neighbors effect, which refers to voters' tendency to support politicians near hometown areas, has not yet been tested systematically for party leaders. Linking a built-for-purpose dataset on 266 leaders to a sample of 380,208 voters from 50 country elections in 19 parliamentary democracies drawn from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project, this article examines the effect of party leaders' local proximity on voters' leader evaluations and voting intentions. I hypothesize that leaders receive more positive evaluations and electoral support from voters in the district where they run for election. The results show that shared district increases voters' sympathy for leaders and their inclination to vote for the party of ‘near’ leaders. While the location of party leaders affects voters in all electoral systems, I find that the friends-and-neighbors effect on leader evaluations and party vote choice is stronger in systems with personalized, preferential and combined ballots.     

Measuring issue ownership with survey questions. A question wording experiment

Issue ownership, which has a competence and an associative dimension, refers to the link between issues and parties in voters' minds. Although used frequently in voting research, there remain worries about the validity of its current measures. The measures may be confounded with respondents' (dis)agreement with parties' position and general party evaluations. Through a question wording experiment we compare measures of both issue ownership types and test which are most affected by the two confounding factors. We find that competence issue ownership measures are heavily affected by confounding factors while associative issue ownership wordings are less. Challenging existing research, we find that especially the classic ‘best at handling’-wording tapping competence issue ownership is most conflated with positions and party preference.