Motivations for Vote Switching: The Micro-logic of Electoral Realignment

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

Abstract

In all advanced democracies, electoral competition has developed from being mostly about economic issues to also being about non-economic (or ‘cultural’) issues. Probably for this reason, countries with proportional electoral systems now feature a more diverse set of parties. Most notable is the emergence of viable green parties on the left and radical right-wing parties on the right. Citizens, therefore, now face a more diverse set of parties that are located in a two-dimensional policy space. This has complicated the calculus of (issue) voting and has eroded traditional ties between types of citizens and established mainstream parties. In a process of realignment, new predictable voting patterns have emerged in many countries.

This paper plans to show at the micro-level of vote switching that citizens change their party support based on their own preference schedules in light of the programmatic alternatives offered by the competing parties. In this way, our paper validates the “folk theory” of responsible partisan governance. Vote switching, of course, accounts only for part of the macro-realignment. Another important component is generational turnover: young voters opt immediately into a market place where personal preferences and parties are aligned without having to switch.

In this paper, we analyze the issue motivations of vote switching for different types of citizens. We characterize the electorate by the interaction of two traits – low vs. high income and low vs. high education – and argue that the four types of citizens – low-education/low-income, low-education/high-income, high-education/low-income, high-education/high-income – exhibit different issue motivations for vote switching. We explore our predictions using (cross-national) observational data.

Authors

• Herbert Kitschelt, Duke University

• Philipp Rehm, Ohio State University