The Logic of Vote Switching in Competitive Democracies

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Voters’ switching of party allegiance—from one party to another party, from party support to non-voting, or from abstention to party support—has received rather little attention in the literature on voting and party alignments. Yet it is vitally important in a time of political realignment. Vote switching can potentially provide key evidence on mechanisms of political accountability and information processing that are critical for the citizen-politician linkage.

Analyzing the logic of vote switching can throw light on the extent to which the “folk theory” of responsible party governance is true. According to this theory, parties act on voter preference and “mood” changes, while voters adjust their choices in light of parties’ policy signals in a one or more dimensional space. But this theory came under intense attack by the Michigan School of electoral behavior starting in the 1950s, and this attack has been reinvigorated in recent years in a number of studies examining voters’ processing of information sent by political parties and concluding that it is group identities, and not the flow of information about partisan policy positions (or actions in government) that matter to voters.

Vote switching offers an under-exploited opportunity to examine these rival theories in detail and gauge the extent to which party signals enter voters’ consideration of alternatives and selection of a favorite party. Analysis of vote switching over longer periods of time also presents an opportunity to tackle the well-known micro-/macro-realignment conundrum: At the micro-level, most voters opt for their habitual choice without much reflection, but at the macro-level large scale changes in the composition of partisan electorates—such as those of European social democratic parties or of the main U.S. parties—exhibit stark patterns, when compared across time. Does macro-change result from the cumulative, directed change of small groups of vote-switchers over a number of elections? In other words, does vote switching follow regular patterns that reveal the micro-logic of macro-realignment?

Empirically, vote switching is difficult to explore because of a shortage of suitable data. The proposed panel features different approaches to address this issue.

Sub Unit

• Division 35: Political Organizations and Parties

Cosponsor

• Division 14: Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Societies

Individual Presentations

• Realigning the Left? Vote Switching among Social Democrats - Jeffrey Nonnemacher, University of Pittsburgh; Nils Ringe, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Jae-Jae Spoon, University of Pittsburgh

• Increase in Volatility: Multiple Identities and Cross-pressured Voters - Ruth Dassonneville, Universite de Montreal

• Motivations for Vote Switching: The Micro-logic of Electoral Realignment - Herbert Kitschelt, Duke University; Philipp Rehm, Ohio State University

Chair

• Ruth Dassonneville Universite de Montreal

Discussants

• Jae-Jae Spoon University of Pittsburgh

• Herbert Kitschelt Duke University