| Abstract: | This article examines mass perceptions of political parties in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany, the Netherlands and France. For each country we construct a map in which the parties, voters, and demographic groups are located to provide a visual and spatial overview of the structure of electoral competition. Two dimensions are adequate for displaying the main ideological cleavages in each of the countries. In each case there is a strong left-right dimension combined with a more culturally defined and usually weaker second competitive dimension. In general, we find that no parties occupy the center areas of the space, which are usually dense with voters. This leads us to question the adequacy of the traditional spatial model of elections for describing competition in multiparty systems. |
