Increase in Volatility: Multiple Identities and Cross-pressured Voters

• In Event: The Logic of Vote Switching in Competitive Democracies

Abstract

Despite decades of research on changes in electoral behaviour, we still lack a good understanding about the sources of volatility. The most often used interpretation of these changes, is that they result from a decline in the importance of long-term determinants (i.e, socio-demographic factors, but also party attachments). This alleged decline of long-term factors, furthermore, is argued to be ‘counterbalanced’ by an increasing importance of short-term factors. In this paper, I will first show that there is limited empirical evidence to support the idea of a shift from long-term to short-term determinants of the vote. Next, I will introduce and test a new explanatory argument for the remarkable over-time changes in electoral politics. In short, the argument that will be layed out and tested is that the main reason for change lies in socio-demographic factors no longer structuring, in a Michigan sense, the role of determinants that are closer to the tip of the funnel of causality. As a result, more voters are cross-pressured between different parties, which increases volatility. To show the over-time increase in citizens being cross-pressured, and its connection to volatility, I make use of existing and publicly available election surveys from countries that have a long history of conducting election research. In particular, I use election study data from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States, allowing me to trace change in the vote since the 1960s.

Author

• Ruth Dassonneville, Universite de Montreal