Retrospective Voting and Electoral Volatility: A Nordic Perspective

This article examines why people vote for the same party, switch parties or move from voting to non-voting at consecutive elections. By using post-election survey data from Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden in the beginning of the 2000s, the main aim is to model the impact of retrospective evaluations of party performance while controlling for theoretically relevant variables. The results of the multinomial regression analyses confirm that dissatisfaction with the performance of a party correlates strongly with party defection, and that the relationship is not weakened with the inclusion of variables for general dissatisfaction with the political system and its actors, standard background factors and political variables. This suggests that many voters are concerned with valence issues and value the overall competence of politicians and parties when they are making a decision whom to vote for.