Split-ticket Voting in Times of Sub-national Government Reorganisation: Evidence from Denmark

Local government amalgamations may have unintended consequences on electoral behaviour. Using the most recent local elections in Denmark as its case, this article demonstrates that inter-level split-ticket voting between three levels (national, regional and local) decreased slightly from 2001 to 2005 – that is, simultaneously with the implementation of a major reform, where many municipalities and all the counties were amalgamated. These amalgamations affect the level of split voting through a process where the local party system operates as an intervening variable: the larger municipalities have a more nationalised local party system, which leads to fewer voters being vote splitters by necessity. The analyses combine general electoral statistics with large voter surveys and benefit from the quasi-experimental setting offered by the fact that not all municipalities were amalgamated.