The Nationalization of Voting Behavior in Comparative Perspective

• In Event: Nationalization and Other Long-Term Trends in Voting

Abstract

The extent to which voting behavior is nationalized is a critical factor for the quality of political accountability. Specifically, accountability may suffer if some elections for consequential subnational offices become `second-order elections' in which national-level partisan preferences dominate. However, prior research has focused primarily on the nationalization of party systems in national-level elections, leaving important questions about the extent of nationalized voting across the levels of government unanswered.

We address this question by presenting the most comprehensive comparative study of nationalized voting behavior to date. We do so with a combination of newly compiled data on electoral returns and original survey data. First, we collect data linking subnational and national election returns in seven industrialized democracies (Canada, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States). These seven countries vary in their use of federalism/decentralization, making them jointly instructive about the relationship between political institutions and nationalized voting patterns. We develop a novel measure of nationalization that focuses on correlations in parties' electoral support across levels of government and accounts for uneven timing of elections. Second, we administer original surveys in six languages in all seven countries, measuring citizens' knowledge of and identification with national vis-à-vis subnational levels of government.

Our evidence demonstrates that nationalization in several European democracies has been high for decades, and that the nationalization of American voting behavior has now reached levels comparable with most European nation-states; Canada remains less nationalized. These findings challenge some prevailing theories about the causes of nationalizing voting behavior, suggesting that recent trends mark the end of America's exceptionalism as a de-nationalized polity.

Authors

• Frederik Hjorth, University of Copenhagen

• Daniel J. Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania