Voters Under Pressure

Abstract

Abstract In many established democracies, vote choices are growing more volatile over time. This book assesses how changes in voters’ decision making process have contributed to this change. The first part of the book examines the evidence for the claim that the increase in volatility results from a shift in weight from long-term to more short-term determinants of the vote choice. This overview and the analyses that are presented highlight the limitations of existing theories of electoral change and call for novel explanations for voter volatility. The second part of the book makes the argument that group-based cross-pressures are an important source of volatility. Such cross-pressures, that results from the fact that citizens’ socio-demographic characteristics and group-memberships pull them in different partisan directions, imply voters’ decision making process lacks constraint, ultimately making the vote choice more volatile. The book tests this argument by means of longitudinal election survey data from eight established democracies, which allows tracing changes in the vote choice process since the 1950s. The over-time increase in levels of group-based cross-pressures provide a first indication of their importance for explaining over-time changes in voting behaviour. The empirical analyses that are presented next provide more evidence that is in line with this theoretical argument. The results show that group-based cross-pressured voters are less likely to be partisan, are less guided by short-term determinants when choosing a party, make their vote choice later and switch parties more. Analyses that make use of panel survey data confirm these key findings.