Why Leave Now? Identity, Competitiveness, and Support for Small Parties

• In Event: Poster Session: Representation and Electoral Systems & Public Opinion and U.S. Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Representation and Electoral Systems

Abstract

Small parties are present in even the most restrictive electoral settings. They continue to attract voters across electoral contests even when they fail to win repeatedly. This long term support for losing parties, particularly in highly restrictive electoral contests, defies many existing theories of the impact of electoral systems on vote choice. In this paper, we present the results of an experiment designed to help us better understand how supporters of small parties interpret electoral incentives. We believe that supporters of broadly policy-oriented parties should be more likely to engage in strategic voting in the face of electoral incentives; in contrast, those who support parties organized around other principles (protest, identity, etc.) should be less likely. To test this, we conduct a survey experiment drawing on a sample of supporters of two parties in Germany: the SSW, an ethnic Danish party competing in the region of Schleswig-Holstein, and the FDP, a traditional liberal party. Survey respondents are exposed to varying vignettes about the competitiveness of their party's candidate in a single-member district contest. We hypothesize that the supporters of the SSW, an explicitly ethnic party, should be less likely to change their vote when confronted with evidence that their preferred party candidate will lose. Our experimental results shed further light on voter behavior at the political margins that, in proper context, help us answer existing questions about contemporary party system fragmentation and the breakdown of long-established voting patterns.

Authors

• Geoff Allen, Utah Tech University

• Matthew Jenkins, Gyeongsang National University