Understanding Political Knowledge and its Influence on Voting Preferences in the 2007 Federal Election

In this article we propose a model to explain how voters’ perceptions of their ideological proximity to a party affect their propensity to vote for that party. We argue that political knowledge plays a crucial moderating role in the relationship between party proximity and voting propensity. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between institutional knowledge (information about the political system) and party knowledge (information about the parties’ left–right positions). An analysis of survey data from the 2007 Swiss federal elections supports our main hypothesis that party knowledge enhances the link between party proximity and voting propensity. Institutional knowledge may have additional influence, but clear evidence for this effect was obtained only for propensities to vote for the Swiss People's Party (SVP). Overall, the impact of political knowledge was found to be substantial, even after controlling for the outstanding influence of party identification and other predictors of voting propensities.     

So Close But So Far: Voting Propensity and Party Choice for Left‐Wing Parties

While the bulk of the literature focuses on the vote for parties from different blocs, the purpose of our article is to study the vote for two parties that are ideologically very close to each other: The Social Democrats and the Greens in Switzerland. To that end, we develop a two‐step model, where voters first make a selection of parties that are acceptable to them and then make their electoral choice out of this set of acceptable alternatives. We use voting propensities as a measure of the first, consideration step and we show that they strongly depend on the distance between voters and parties on the Left–Right scale. With regard to the second, choice stage of the electoral process we hypothesize about the factors that may account for the varying ability of the two parties to convert potential voters into real voters. Our empirical tests provide encouraging support for our hypotheses regarding the impact of socio‐demographic variables and issue voting. Strategic considerations, by contrast, do not seem to matter.     

The Use of the Endorsement Heuristic in Swiss Popular Votes

There already exists an impressive body of literature studying the use of voting recommendations in elections and popular votes. The main shortcoming of most of these observational studies is the measurement of voting recommendations. There is rarely any direct evidence to show that voters did indeed follow a recommendation when making a vote decision. Thus, it is not clear how widespread the use of such voting endorsements is. We measured the use of endorsements by evaluating the voting motives reported by the voters themselves. Employing this measure, we could show that endorsements have an impact on Swiss referendum votes. Depending on the issue at stake, between 2 and 27 percent of the voters admitted that they based their decision on recommendations. Moreover, the use of endorsements heavily depends on motivation, project‐specific knowledge level, and degree of ambivalence towards the issue at stake.     

Correct Voting in Direct Legislation

Correct voting in elections has been extensively analysed in the recent past. However, thus far, correct voting in direct legislation has hardly been investigated. This is all the more surprising since direct legislation is a more demanding form of democracy and, thus, to vote one's true preferences in direct legislation represents a greater challenge than picking the “right” party or the “right” candidate at elections. Moreover, the few researches on the correctness of individual referendum votes used a measurement method that we think has some methodological shortfalls. Instead, we want to propose another better‐suited method of measuring correct voting in direct legislation settings. This method makes use of voters' stances on the issue at stake. Besides, we will scrutinize the share of correct voting as well as its determinants on the Swiss popular vote of November 2009, which included three rather different propositions. The study shows that a majority of Swiss voters are indeed able to vote their true preferences. The ability to vote correctly depends primarily on the individual voter's project‐specific knowledge, but also, under certain circumstances, on the use of heuristics.     

Democracy Beyond Secrecy: Assessing the Promises and Pitfalls of Collective Voting

This paper assesses collective voting as a specific mode of democratic decision‐making and compares it to secret voting. Under collective voting, voters gather in one place and decide by the show of hands. We theorise two potential advantages and two disadvantages of collective voting so defined. We then draw on original survey data from one of the largest polities practising collective voting, the citizen assembly of the Swiss canton of Glarus. We find that both the promises and pitfalls of non‐secret voting are exaggerated. Non‐secret voting’s suspected pitfalls – social pressure and abstention – do not generally materialise in our sample, although for women they do appear to be relevant to some extent. However, the promises of collective voting – enabling cue‐taking and discursive bridging and bonding – are equally realised to a limited extent only.     

Compensatory Voting in Direct Legislation. Evidence from Switzerland

In elections, voters sometimes compensate for post‐election bargaining processes by electing parties that are more extreme than themselves. We investigate compensatory voting in direct democracy. Our goals are to develop and test a measure of compensatory voting in direct legislation and assess its extent of compensatory voting. Empirically, we draw on the case of Switzerland, a country with frequent popular votes. We operationalize compensatory voting as voting ‘yes’ on a popular initiative in spite of endorsing arguments that speak against this initiative, under the condition of being well‐informed about the initiative. Using data from post‐ballot surveys on 17'570 individuals having voted on 63 popular initiatives in the period 1993 to 2015, our analysis shows that compensatory voting has not significantly increased in Switzerland in this period.     

Out of Sight,Out of Mind? External Voting and the Political Representation of Portuguese Emigrants

Over recent decades, emigrants have gained expanded voting rights on a global scale. Despite the normative debates about this issue, there are few empirical studies on why states decide to implement external voting and how electoral systems perform. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at the Portuguese case. Our study suggests that a combination of political and socio-economic factors explains the implementation of external voting. On the other hand, the interests of political parties and the low level of civil society engagement are key to determining the failure of electoral reforms and the attempts to overcome the shortcomings of external voting.     

Stability and Change in Party Preference

This article analyses stability and volatility of party preferences using data from the Swiss Household‐Panel (SHP), which, for the first time, allow studying transitions and stability of voters over several years in Switzerland. Analyses cover the years 1999–2007 and systematically distinguish changes between party blocks and changes within party blocks. The first part looks at different patterns of change, which show relatively high volatility. The second part tests several theories on causes of such changes applying a multinomial random‐effects model. Results show that party preferences stabilise with their duration and with age and that the electoral cycle, political sophistication, socio‐structural predispositions, the household‐context as well as party size and the number of parties each explain part of electoral volatility. Different results for within‐ and between party‐block changes underlie the importance of that differentiation.     

German Voters in Times of Crisis: The Impact of Perceptions and Economic Context on Electoral Behaviour

This paper analyses the connection between economic context, voters’ individual assessment of the economy, and party identification, taking the German national elections of 2009 as an example. Based on the results of multinomial and multilevel regression models, the article shows that partisanship moderates how the economy affects the vote. In cases of increasing unemployment in the constituency, voters are less likely to vote for the Social Democrats instead of the CDU and the opposition. This effect is particularly strong amongst voters who report that they identify with the Social Democrats. Regarding the effect of voters’ assessment of the national economy, the results are different. In this case, a better evaluation of the regional economy increases the probability to vote for right-wing parties – notably amongst voters without partisanship. These findings suggest that the moderating effect of partisanship on the economy’s impact on voting behaviour should not be overestimated. What is more, this analysis implies that research on economic voting should always account for both contextual factors and voters’ personal assessment of the economy, as these measures reveal different dimensions of economic voting.     

Invalid Voting in German Constituencies

This article studies invalid voting, which has received very little attention so far, given the broad interest and substantial relevance of voting behaviour research. Existing evidence is mostly limited to rather specific and hardly representative countries. Yet, the extent of invalid ballots is not negligible. Despite undemanding electoral rules, more invalid votes are cast in German general elections than votes for niche parties. Against this backdrop, the article describes prevalence of invalid voting in the mixed electoral system of Germany and tests explanations of its variation between constituencies. Analysing data from the most recent Bundestag Election, results give clear support to politico-institutional explanations: voters are more willing to waste their vote if second-order elections are held concurrently. Specifically under the plurality rule, more (first) votes are wasted if there are large shares for parties without direct candidates and many competing candidates.     

Leader Effects and Voting for the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe

Charismatic leaders are often assumed to drive the electoral success of populist radical right parties. Yet, little attention is given to how voter evaluations of leaders influence individual voting behavior. To our knowledge, no systematic and comparative tests of this empirical question exist. In this paper, we test to what extent voters’ support for populist radical right parties is fueled by leaders' appreciation. In order to examine leader effects on the populist radical right vote, we rely on an original dataset pooling 29 National Election Studies from ten established West European parliamentary democracies (1985‐2018). Our analysis finds that: (1) voters’ evaluation of party leaders is significantly associated with voting for populist radical right parties; (2) leader evaluations are more important than left‐right self‐placement when it comes to voting for the populist radical right, and (3) leader effects are more important for populist radical right voters than for other voters.     

The evolution of party images and party system in Taiwan, 1992–2004

This article examines the evolution of party images in Taiwan between 1992 and 2004. It shows that party images are not immutable, as while the DPP gained more positive images, the other parties gained more negative images during the research period. The results show that the Taiwanese parties have quite distinct party images. Taiwanese voters often tend to use ethnic background and the cross-Strait relations to define the parties. Party images also play a significant role in Taiwanese voting behaviour, even when other variables are controlled. Voters tend to vote for the parties that they have favourable impressions of. The results also have implications for how political parties package themselves to attract more votes and on the development of the party system in Taiwan.     

Is Consensual Politicizing Being Punished in Switzerland?

Over the last decade, Switzerland has been characterized by both a radicalization of its political system and the relative success of the SP and SVP parties, which tend to adopt a strategy of permanent campaigning. Because of this, it is often argued that politicians are held accountable for their behaviour and that their electoral successes depend on their voting behaviour in parliament. We thus explore whether the voting behaviour of representatives, or citizens' evaluations of parties' ideological positions had an impact on their electoral success in the 1995, 1999, and 2003 national elections. More precisely, we assess how far the proximity and directional models explain the electoral success of incumbents and parties using roll call data for the National Council as well as the Selects surveys at the individual level. The results at both levels suggest that voters' choice is largely consistent with what is predicted by the spatial models of electoral behaviour. Swiss voters form their party preference on both proximity and direction, which supports a mixed model of electoral behaviour.     

Values and Votes: The Indirect Effect of Personal Values on Voting Behavior

Recent research from social psychology suggests that personal values predict political behavior, such as vote choice. In contrast to previous studies, it is hypothesized in this article that personal values influence voting behavior only indirectly through political value orientation. Drawing on the personal value concept of Shalom Schwartz, structural equation models based on Swiss electoral data (SELECTS 2007) are applied to test the hypothesis of indirect effects. The empirical analysis shows that the effects of personal values are indeed mediated by political values, but that their indirect impact on vote choice remains substantial. It is argued on a theoretical level that personal values need first to be translated (or transformed) into political values to become effective on voting behavior.     

Decomposing the Vote: Individual,Communal, and Cantonal Sources of Voting Behavior in Switzerland

This article considers individual, communal, and cantonal sources of voting behavior in the 2007 National Council elections in Switzerland. Using hierarchical linear models, it is shown how the vote propensity for the five main parties (CVP, FDP, Greens, SP, and SVP) varies across individuals, communes, and cantons. Key explanatory factors at each of these levels are explored, as well as cross‐party differences in the effects of these factors.     

The Political Consequences of National Crisis Management: Micro-Level Evidence from German Voters during the 2008/09 Global Economic Crisis

How does national crisis management affect the electoral fortunes of coalition governments? Drawing on micro-level data from just before the 2009 federal elections in Germany, this article investigates how voters' evaluation of specific policies against the global financial crisis affected approval of and voting intentions for the then-governing grand coalition. We find that voters in favour of the two most prominent anti-crisis policies, the car-scrap bonus and the public guarantee for banks, were more likely to approve of and to vote for the two incumbent parties. These evaluations of specific policies influenced individuals' vote choice in addition to their assessments of the economic situation more generally and in addition to party identification. This suggests that even in the greatest economic turmoil with blurred political responsibilities, government parties can win or lose voters through the implementation of specific economic policies.     

The Impact of Postal Voting on Participation: Evidence for Switzerland

Many countries are forging ahead with convenient balloting methods, in particular electronic and postal voting, in order to re‐engage voters. In this paper, we test whether the cost reductions through postal voting increase turnout. The empirical analysis is based on a newly collected data set on the introduction of postal voting in Swiss cantons. We take advantage of the unique fact that voting by mail was introduced at different times across cantons. This allows identifying the impact of postal voting on turnout, independent of time, issue and canton‐specific effects. The estimated average effect on turnout is roughly 4.1 percentage points for an average turnout of 43 percent between 1970 and 2005.     

Multi-Level Voting: A Stabilising Force or a Push towards Increasing Voter Volatility?

Germany has witnessed a drastic decline in turnout and, at the same time, a clear increase in voter volatility, late deciding and party switching. These changes affected all layers of the federal system to different degrees and with varying speed. While standard explanations refer to processes of modernisation and value change to explain the decline of stable and loyal partisanship, this article focuses on the role of an – until now – neglected aspect: the significance of multi-level voting in both maintaining voter stability and fostering its decline. After all, party loyalty needs to be re-activated and mobilised across individuals' life-cycles. Electoral campaigns are the prime occasion for parties to revive the link with ‘their’ core clientele. When campaigning is frequent, as in federal systems, mobilising takes place almost constantly. This article argues that multi-level voting contributed considerably to the stability which characterised German party politics for decades after World War II. However, since parties increasingly use campaigns to recruit new voter segments at the expense of mobilising core voters, today, multi-level voting has negative effects on stable party attachments and thus contributes to the increase in fluidity and volatility we witness today.     

Party Potential and the Pattern of Party Competition in the 2003 Swiss Federal Elections

This article explores both the party potential of the five major parties in Switzerland at the 2003 elections and how well the parties actually did in relation to how well they could have done. A party's electoral potential depends on both the probability of the electorate voting for the party and on the probability of individual voters participating in an election. The analysis shows that the SVP and the CVP were successful in mobilising their potential voters in the 2003 elections, while the FDP did almost as badly as they could have done. However, compared to the potential of the FDP or the SP, the overall potential of the SVP is limited. For the SVP, issue specific factors account for the mobilising success. This is especially the case for its stands against the EU and asylum seekers. The CVP profited from the Ruth Metzler effect, who was a key figure in the 2003 CVP campaign.     

Are European Elections Second-Order Elections for Everyone?

Second-order election (SOE) theory has been used to explain voting behaviour in European elections. Voters believe that less is at stake in some elections and some voters hence tend to cast a protest vote. However, most studies on the topic have focused on the demand side of SOEs – i.e. on the voters – and have ignored or only partially tackled the supply side – i.e. the strategic behaviour of parties – and excluded small and marginal parties (SMPs). However, SMPs may have greater incentive to seriously compete in SOEs. The 2019 European Parliament elections in Germany were particularly interesting to SMPs as there was no voting threshold, thereby increasing the chances of SMPs. To capture whether SMPs view European elections as first-order elections and therefore expend more resources than parliamentary parties on these elections, I analysed campaign expenditures and manifestos. Results indicate that SMPs act within a rational actor framework, though not unequivocally.