Voting for an Ally? How Voters Respond to Pre-election Alliances in India

• In Event: How Voters Perceive Coalitions (Virtual Session)

Abstract

Can the influence of partisan loyalties extend even to races in which a party is not competing? Around the world, political parties form pre-election alliances in which they agree not to compete against one another in order to defeat a common rival. When they do so in the context of single-member district electoral systems, each allied party competes in a limited number of races meaning that most races feature fewer candidates than there are active parties. Do parties absent from a race because of an election alliance still shape voters’ decisions? Drawing on observational data from two Indian state elections as well as three survey experiments with Indian respondents, this paper shows that evaluations of an absent party strongly predict vote choice, particularly when voters dislike the ally who is competing in the race on behalf of the alliance. Yet, voters’ evaluations of the alliance’s candidate remain extremely strong predictors of vote choice, even when the contesting party is very small.

Author

• Adam W. Ziegfeld, Temple University