Strategic voting in a semi-presidential system with a two-ballot electoral system. The 2007 French legislative election

Abstract

The decline of the explanatory power of the Michigan model of party identification led to increased importance being given to models based on short-term factors. Among such models, the strategic voting model occupies a central position, because it allows us both to understand the ways in which voters modify their vote intentions in a specific situation and to measure the consequences for party systems. But if scholars have paid a great deal of attention to strategic voting in plurality systems, they have often neglected strategic voting in majority runoff systems, although this rule is widely used around the world both for presidential and legislative elections. Owing to the two rounds, options for strategic voting in a majority runoff system are more numerous than in a plurality system. But, the usual form of strategic voting is not the only reason that voters can choose to desert their preferred parties. We assume that each election is embedded in an institutional and political context that can also affect voters’ behavior. In France, recently this question of context has become more acute for two reasons. First, legislative elections are both national and local ballots, in which strong parties frequently present candidates who already hold one or more political offices (a widespread practice known as the cumul des mandats). Thus, voters can desert their preferred party for a candidate of another party that they know and already appreciate. Second, legislative elections now take place some weeks after the presidential elections. Voters can change their vote intentions for legislative elections because of what happened in the presidential elections to affect the overall political regime. Drawing on district-level survey data from the 2007 French legislative elections, this article reveals low levels of strategic voting in a narrow sense but strong effects when we define strategic voting more broadly as affected by embedded institutional rules. This latter form of strategic voting helps to shape the party system.