Heterogeneity in the effects of resources, proximity, and identity on preference voting in PR systems

Abstract

ABSTRACT The institutional design of the Czech Republic's flexible-list PR system with optional preference voting allows us to examine not only who casts preference votes, but also how voters allocate preference votes to candidates on the party ballot. Drawing on the resources, proximity and identity models, we first examine how these voter attributes impact the decision to cast preference votes or not. We then extend our analysis to theorise and test the heterogeneous impacts of these factors on voting only for the list puller, for candidates other than the list puller, or for both types of candidates.