Changing the relationship status: how coalition history affects voter perceptions of parties

Although extensive research analyzes the factors that motivate European parties to shift their policy positions, there is little cross-national research that analyzes how voters respond to parties’ policy shifts. We report pooled, time-series, analyses of election survey data from several European polities, which suggest that voters do not systematically adjust their perceptions of parties’ positions in response to shifts in parties’ policy statements during election campaigns. We also find no evidence that voters adjust their Left-Right positions or their partisan loyalties in response to shifts in parties’ campaign-based policy statements. By contrast, we find that voters do respond to their subjective perceptions of the parties’ positions. Our findings have important implications for party policy strategies and for political representation. Research on political representation in Europe emphasizes the linkages between parties’ policy positions and their supporters’ policy beliefs. According to this responsible party model of political representation, it is normatively desirable that parties’ policy programmes – and governing parties’ policy outputs – match the views of the party’s supporters, a desiratum that reflects Sartori’s observation that “citizens in Western democracies are represented by and through parties. This is inevitable” (1968, page 471, emphasis in original). Over the past thirty years dozens of studies have analyzed the mass-elite policy linkages that the responsible party model highlights (see, e.g., Dalton 1985; Powell 1989; Iversen 1994). These studies typically report reasonably close matches between parties’ positions and their supporters’ policy preferences, particularly with respect to policy debates over Left-Right social welfare issues (see, e.g., Dalton 1985). In an evolving political environment wherein both parties and voters shift their policy positions, policy correspondence between political parties and their supporters can be maintained through some combination of party elites responding to their supporters and these supporters responding to party elites, i.e., elites may dynamically adjust their policy positions in response to shifts in their supporters’ beliefs, a process we label party responsiveness, and party supporters may dynamically adjust their beliefs in response to shifts in their preferred party’s policy positions, a process we label party persuasion. Alternatively, rank-and-file voters may switch their partisan loyalties in response to parties’ policy shifts, i.e. voters may engage in policy-based partisan switching. The latter two processes both involve voters responding to parties, and we collectively label these as processes of partisan adjustments. We analyze the dynamics of voters’ responses to shifts in European parties’ Left-Right positions. We ask the following questions: When parties shift their Left-Right policy statements, as re1 An alternative representation criterion emphasizes the link between government policies and the median voter position in the electorate (see, e.g., Powell 2000; McDonald and Budge 2005). flected in their election manifestos, do citizens update their perceptions of the parties’ Left-Right positions? And, do we observe partisan adjustments in response to parties’ shifting policy statements, i.e., do citizens respond to parties’ statements by shifting their own Left-Right positions (a persuasion process) and/or their partisan loyalties (partisan switching)? The surprising answer we provide to each of the above questions is no. We find no substantively or statistically significant evidence that voters adjust their perceptions of parties’ Left-Right positions in response to the policy statements in parties’ election manifestos – a conclusion that is striking given that interviews with European political elites that we conducted (discussed below) suggest that parties campaign on the basis of these manifestos. We also find no evidence of citizens’ partisan adjustments in response to parties’ policy statements, i.e., we find no evidence that voters adjust their Left-Right positions or their partisan loyalties in response to these policy statements. This latter conclusion holds both for analyses of national election surveys from five European countries, and for separate analyses of Eurobarometer data from 12 countries over the period 19732002. Simply put, we find that when parties shift the statements in their policy programmes – statements that form the basis for the parties’ election campaigns, according to the party elites we interviewed – there is no evidence that voters respond by adjusting their perceptions of the parties’ Left-Right positions, their own Left-Right positions, or their partisan loyalties. By contrast, we find that European citizens do react to their perceptions of parties’ Left-Right positions, i.e., citizens adjust their Left-Right positions and their partisan loyalties in response to the parties’ policy images. Overall, our findings thereby suggest that Left-Right ideology does matter to 2 The five countries are Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway, the five European polities for which national election survey data are available over a lengthy time period. 3 The twelve countries that are included in the Eurobarometer surveys are Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Luxembourg, Greece, Ireland, Belgium, and Italy.

Various authors have argued that the behavior of voters as well as parties in most West European countries is structured mainly by an ideological `left-right' dimension. However, it remains unclear how the dimension labeled `left-right' by those studying party behavior relates to voters' perceptions of this dimension of conflict. This study assesses the extent to which Dutch voters' perceptions of parties' left-right positions reflect policy positions of parties determined by the contents of election programs. The research design is dynamic, allowing one to observe changes in party positions, as well as dynamic changes in the structure of a party system. The analyses show that the contents of party programs are strongly linked to voters' perceptions of parties' left-right positions, but that the strength of this linkage has decreased gradually since the late 1970s. Repercussions for political representation are discussed.

According to spatial models of elections, citizen perceptions of party policy positions are a key determinant of voting choices. Yet recent scholarship from Europe suggests that voters do not adjust their perceptions according to what parties advocate in their campaigns. This article argues that voters develop a more accurate understanding of parties’ ideological positions following a leadership change because a new leader increases the credibility of party policy offerings. Focusing on Western European parties in the 1979–2012 period, it shows that having a new leader is a necessary condition for voters to more accurately perceive the left–right placements of opposition parties. Voters do not use party platforms to form perceptions of incumbent parties’ positions, regardless of whether the leader is new or veteran. These results have important implications for models of party competition and democratic representation.

Recent studies analyze how citizens update their perceptions of parties’ left‐right positions in response to new political information. We extend this research to consider the issue of European integration, and we report theoretical and empirical analyses that citizens do not update their perceptions of parties’ positions in response to election manifestos, but that citizens’ perceptions of parties’ positions do track political experts’ perceptions of these positions, and, moreover, that it is party supporters who disproportionately perceive their preferred party's policy shifts. Given that experts plausibly consider a wide range of information, these findings imply that citizens weigh the wider informational environment when assessing parties’ positions. We also present evidence that citizens’ perceptions of party position shifts matter, in that they drive partisan sorting in the mass public.

Combining voter preferences with party position estimates from different sources for studying voting behavior and representation

The terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ are often used in political communication to describe the main differences between parties. Adolescents who are learning about politics also learn to understand the party system (partially) through the lens of the left–right spectrum. This study examines adolescents' perceptions of parties' left–right positions and their substantive understandings of ‘left’ and ‘right’ with an innovative battery of items. We use original survey data from Dutch adolescents and their parents to investigate differences and similarities in their perceptions of party positions and the meanings they attach to ‘left’ and ‘right.’ Our findings show that adolescents' understanding of ‘left’ and ‘right’ is remarkably similar to that of the generation of their parents. Even though left–right perceptions of adolescents seem to be influenced by their own parents, adolescents form their perceptions mostly in line with those of the median voter, particularly adolescents that are more engaged and knowledgeable.

Recent research documents that voters infer that governing coalition partners share similar ideologies, independently of these parties’ actual policy statements. We argue that citizens estimate party positions from more general forms of interparty cooperation and conflict, particularly near the times of national elections. We analyze tens of thousands of media reports on elite interactions from 13 Western democracies between 2001 and 2014, and show that—controlling for coalition arrangements and for the policy tones of parties’ election manifestos—voters infer greater left–right agreement between pairs of parties that have more cooperative public relationships, but that this “cooperation effect” is only evident near the times of national elections. Our findings have implications for parties’ policy images and for mass–elite linkages.

Does context matter – The impact of electoral systems, political parties and individual characteristics on voters' perceptions of party positions

Local context has been shown to influence political attitudes and behaviors. We extend this research to argue that when a party performs better in a voter’s region or the region is more competitive, she will have more information on the parties and be better able to correctly identify the party’s positions. In addition, we argue that the strategy the party takes will also have an effect. To test our argument, we combine individual- and party-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and data on the party’s regional electoral performance from the European NUTS-Level Electoral Database from 1996 to 2021 for five federal or quasi-federal West European countries. Our results confirm our expectations. Our findings have important implications for understanding the multilevel nature of representation more generally, and how a voter’s local context shapes how she perceives parties’ positions and how parties can use local context to their advantage, more specifically.

ANY STUDENTS of the electoral process would defend the notion that the attitudes and perceptions of individuals are important determinants of the nation's voting patterns.' Indeed, the content of voters' perceptions of parties, candidates and issues appears to be strongly related to both shortterm and long-term fluctuations in election outcomes. One of the most interesting formulations of the relationship between individual perceptions and voting preferences is the six-component model developed at the University of Michigan Survey Research Center.2 These analysts viewed their work as an attempt to construct a model incorporating that set of attitudinal factors which bear on individual choice in any given election. In other words, both long-term and short-term forces had to be captured in a theoretical statement of the voter decision-making process.3 While the authors clearly recognized the longterm effect of such factors as party identification, they nevertheless argued that fixed party loyalties and sociological characteristics cannot account fully for the vote. In particular, neither of these factors, relatively inert through time, can account for the short-term fluctuations in the division of the vote which are of

Defence date: 21 March 2016

Scholars of British politics traditionally characterize the electorate in terms of partisanship and social class. This paper suggests that ideology and issue preferences also enter into voter perceptions of British political parties and leadership. Using data from the 1992 British Election Study, the paper analyzes the factors that contribute to individual voters; perceptions of the Conservative and Labour parties. The 1992 election saw the major parties move toward the ideological center of British voters. Perceptions of political parties are found to be multidimensional and issue-oriented. A spatial model incorporating issue preferences and perceptions of party positions proves both empirically and theoretically richer than simple models of partisanship. The analysis of British voters complements earlier applications of the general spatial model in the context of the United States.

This article analyzes the effect of parties’ election statements on voter perceptions of party policy positions. It reveals robust evidence that campaign policy announcements do influence party images: As a result of the campaign, party policy brands shift in the direction of the platform. Hence, it challenges the conclusion in Adams, Ezrow, and Somer-Topcu that voters do not adjust their perception of parties’ positions to campaign statements. This article makes a key contribution to our understanding of elections, as it provides empirical evidence that election campaigns are useful for voters to identify changes in parties’ policy preferences. It also opens avenues for further research that the results in Adams et al. had discouraged from, such as analyses of the factors that explain variation in the relevance of campaign statements.

The accuracy of voters’ party position perceptions is critical for the functioning of representative democracy, and recent comparative work has shown that voters generally have accurate perceptions of parties’ left-right ideological positions. Yet, we know little about how the left-right results generalize to single issues and how personal issue importance evaluations shape accuracy. Building on existing work on the consequences of issue importance, we argue that voters seek more information and become more accurate in their perceptions of party issue positions on those issues they deem personally important. However, we also posit that this is likely a curvilinear relationship. For highly important issues, voters are more likely to have strong priors and engage in projection effects of assimilation and contrast, limiting their ability to accurately perceive party positions on highly important issues. Using original voter – and expert-level surveys from ten advanced democracies, we show support for our expectations.

The traditional spatial model of elections places voters and candidates in an ideological space. Empirical analysis of spatial theory uses voter ratings of candidate and ideal positions on policy issue scales. The spatial model can be enhanced by the incorporation of nonpolicy components as well. These nonpolicy issues can be descriptive (age, ethnicity) or affective (honesty, competence). Using responses for a survey conducted during the 1965 Canadian federal election, an empirical evaluation of these nonpolicy issues is made. Voters are not unanimous in perceptions of parties (or candidates) on nonpolicy dimensions. The traditional spatial model can be extended to include individual voter ideal points and perceptions. This enhanced model proves quite successful at predicting vote choice.