Brands, Issue Emphasis, and Electoral Volatility

• In Event: New Perspectives on Party Branding

Abstract

Rates of vote switching and electoral volatility have risen across Europe as mainstream parties’ electoral dominance wains and challenger parties capture increasing vote share. Existing scholarship finds that the degree of differentiation and ideological polarization between parties is a crucial determinant of volatility. When parties take similar positions and thereby dilute their brands, citizens are more likely to vote for a different party than in the previous election. However, this literature has yet to consider the role of parties’ similarity in terms of issue emphasis. Are voters more likely to switch between parties with more similar issue emphases? I leverage data on the similarity of issue emphases in party manifestos matched with cross-national election survey data to capture the degree to which issue salience structures electoral volatility in Europe. The findings of this article have implications for our understanding of how the salience component of party brands structures party loyalty and the long-term decline of mainstream parties in European democracies.

Author

• Jacob Robert Gunderson, University of Gothenburg