Voter Mobilization and Party Competition in a Volatile Electorate

Abstract

Following a model suggested by McPhee and Smith, the institutionalization of voting behavior is analyzed as a repetitive learning process. Using the Weimar Republic as an example, volatile partisan attachments among groups of supporters of the more ideologically moderate political parties are examined. A formal model comprised of a system of four interdependent differential equations is used to characterize the aggregate voter shifts over time of various groups in the population. The results show that a large wave of new voters disrupted emerging electoral patterns in 1930. In the subsequent realigning election of July 1932, electoral support for non-Catholic moderate parties was transferred to the extreme rightist parties, notably the Nazis.