Vote Switching Research Articles

Giorgia on their minds: Vote switching to Fratelli d’Italia in the Italian general election of 2022

In the context of the ongoing deinstitutionalisation of the Italian party system, Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) emerged as the most voted-for party in the 2022 general election. Although previous studies categorised FdI as a populist radical right (PRR) party, no research has so far been conducted on its voters. We examine whether the traditional explanations for the rise of PRR parties also apply to FdI. We develop a theoretical argument suggesting that in the context of over-crowded competition amongst populist parties, as seen in Italy, leadership evaluation trumps policy and ideological consideration in predicting vote switching. Our results reveal that positive evaluations of Giorgia Meloni emerge as the most significant predictor of voters switching to FdI in the 2022 election. This research sheds light on individual-level mainstreaming of PRR attitudes and preferences, in particular during an electorally expansive phase, emphasising the role of leadership evaluations in voting behaviour in a context characterised by intense populist competition.

Comparative Vote Switching: A New Framework for Studying Dynamic Multiparty Competition

Comparative Vote Switching: A New Framework for Studying Dynamic Multiparty Competition

Economic Crises, Subjective Well-Being, and Vote Switching: The Case of Brazil’s 2018 Presidential Election

This paper examines the influence of the 2015 economic crisis on subjective well-being (SWB) and the withdrawal of support for the incumbent party during the 2018 presidential election in Brazil. Using Gallup World Poll data and a post-election national survey conducted by the Center for Studies on Public Opinion, we find that the economic crisis influenced through different channels both SWB and vote switching. Worsening personal economic circumstances explain the decline in SWB in the aftermath of the crisis, while deteriorating perceptions about the economy explain the vote switching during the presidential election in 2018. Leadership disapproval played a role in both, but to different degrees. One possible explanation for the limited effect of personal economic circumstances on voting behavior in Brazil is that those who were most severely affected by the economic downturn, specifically the poorest individuals in the country, did not see voting for Bolsonaro as a feasible or desirable choice.

Past the saturation point: Why voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice‐versa

AbstractWhen do voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice‐versa? To understand these switches, we focus on the saturation of the party system. We theorize that when a party system is oversaturated – i.e. when a higher effective number of parties contests elections than predicted based on socio‐political contextual characteristics (the system's ‘carrying capacity’) – it becomes increasingly likely that: (1) mainstream party voters defect to niche parties; and (2) niche party voters refrain from switching to mainstream parties. Based on vote‐switching patterns in 15 countries and 53 elections, we find that oversaturation increases shifts from mainstream to niche parties. Further analyses show that this holds for shifts from mainstream to radical left and right parties, but not for shifts to green parties. This has important consequences for research on vote switching, the electoral consequences of policy differentiation and the competition between niche and mainstream parties.

On the measurement of electoral volatility

Electoral volatility measures the degree of vote switching between political parties in two consecutive elections. Political scientists use this as an indicator of party system (in)stability. Pedersen (1979) states that volatility should increase when the number of parties changes and/or relevant parties experience vote transfer between elections. However, his proposed functional form of measuring volatility does not always respond to these changes. To address these limitations, we introduce a class of additively separable electoral volatility measures which are responsive to changes in both the number of parties and their vote shares. We present a set of axioms that are both necessary and sufficient to characterize the proposed class of indices, making the structure of the indices more transparent. The paper also introduces two quasi orders which can rank party systems in terms of all electoral volatility indices satisfying certain intuitively reasonable axioms. Finally, applications of the proposed class of indices and the quasi orders are provided using data from Indian state elections.

Voting Against Autocracy

abstract: When and how do voters punish politicians for subverting democracy? To investigate the role of the public in democratic backsliding, I develop a conceptual framework that differentiates among three mechanisms: vote switching, backlash, and disengagement. The first mechanism entails defection by voters from a candidate who undermines democracy to one who does not; the latter two mechanisms entail transitions between voting and abstention. I estimate the magnitude of each mechanism by combining evidence from a series of original survey experiments, traditional surveys, and a quasi-experiment afforded by the rerun of the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election, in which the governing party, akp, attempted to overturn the result of an election that it had lost. I find that although vote switching and backlash contributed to the akp's eventual defeat the most, each of the three mechanisms served as a democratic check in some subset of the Istanbul electorate. Persuasion, mobilization, and even demobilization are all viable tools for curbing the authoritarian tendencies of elected politicians.

The fall of Trump: mobilization and vote switching in the 2020 presidential election

AbstractVoters use salient issues to inform their vote choice. Using 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES) data, we analyze how short-, medium-, and long-term issues informed the vote for president in the 2020 election, which witnessed record-setting participation. To explain the dynamics of presidential vote choice, we employ a voter typology advanced by Key (1966). Specifically, compared to standpatters, who in 2020 registered the same major party vote as in 2016, we find that new voters in 2020 and voters switching their preferences from 2016 cast their ballots in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. In the end, President Donald Trump was denied reelection by new voters and vote switchers principally because certain issues had a notable effect in moving their presidential preferences in the Democratic direction.

Fair-Weather Voters: Personality and Vote Switching Intentions

While numerous explanations for vote-switching have been proposed (e.g. declining rates of partisanship, ideological shifts, partisan ambivalence, change in policy preferences), far less work has examined the personality profile of people more likely to engage in this behaviour. In Study 1, we examined the relationship between both general (i.e. openness, conscientiousness) and antagonistic (i.e. psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism) personality traits and the intent to switch one’s vote in a large sample of Canadian citizens, while controlling for several established correlates such as age, income and political interest. Of all personality traits, only individuals higher in openness reported a greater intent to engage in vote switching. Despite our expectations, Machiavellianism, a trait characterized by its strategic nature, was unrelated to vote switching intentions. In Study 2, we addressed several methodological reasons for why antagonistic traits may have been unrelated to vote switching intentions in Study 1 by examining the traits at the facet level and utilizing a new measure of Machiavellianism among a separate sample of Canadian citizens. Here again, we found little evidence for a relationship between antagonistic traits, including Machiavellianism, and vote switching intentions.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Abstract Does political ambivalence increase vote switching? While the effects of ambivalence on vote switching have been investigated in the American political system, its application to multi-party systems has not been explored. To address this gap, this article investigates the effects of ambivalence on vote intention switching and vote switching in Germany's multi-party system, which has recently experienced electoral instability. Using the German Longitudinal Election Study (gles), the article teases out the mechanics of party ambivalence, leader ambivalence, and party-leader ambivalence. The results suggest that ambivalence increases the probability of voters switching parties during the pre-election campaigning period and between two consecutive elections. Ambivalence therefore has important implications for vote switching and for understanding the underlying determinants of electoral volatility in twenty-first-century politics.

New Voters and Old Voters: Understanding Volatility in Quebecers’ Federal Election Votes between 2008 and 2019

AbstractFederal elections between 2008 and 2019 saw a great of volatility in Quebec, with important consequences for election outcomes. The surge in New Democratic Party (NDP) support in Quebec led the party to official opposition, while Liberal gains in 2011 led the party to a majority government, and Bloc Québécois gains in 2019 helped to reduce the Liberals to a minority. To what extent was this volatility driven by voters switching parties and to what degree was it driven by voters entering and exiting the electorate? This article uses ecological inference based on riding-level data to examine the dynamics of party competition in Quebec from 2008 to 2019. We show that while voter mobilization mattered to volatility, vote switching was the important driver of changing party fortunes during this period.

New parties in a crowded electoral space: the (in)stability of radical right voters in the Netherlands

Previous research demonstrated that voters for the Dutch radical right party PVV were the most stable voters among the highly volatile electorate. However, since 2017 two new radical right parties have successfully entered the Dutch Parliament: Forum for Democracy (FvD) and JA21, conceivably at the expense of the PVV. The success of these new parties is puzzling, because there does not seem to be much room for new parties campaigning on a highly similar platform. In our paper, we use LISS panel data to study the determinants of vote switching patterns between four subsequent elections from 2017 to 2021. We find that the surprise victory of the new far right in 2019 can be explained by its ability to attract both former PVV voters as well as voters new to the far right. Since then, FvD has lost many of its supporters again, but these voters have mostly switched to other far-right parties, meaning the far-right support base has become fragmented, yet enlarged. This suggests that when provided with viable alternatives, radical right voters are as volatile as other voter groups.

Do coalition and formateur expectations affect vote switching?

AbstractThe existing literature on vote switching – a major cause of electoral change – rarely discusses strategic incentives as motivating voters to switch parties between elections. We study how coalition-directed voting, a common type of strategic voting in parliamentary democracies, affects vote switching. Utilizing an original three-wave online panel survey conducted in Israel in 2019–2020, we show that voters engage in formateur optimization and policy balancing: they switch their vote in order to affect the identity of the next formateur and desert a party they previously voted for if they believe it will not enter the next coalition. We also show that the perceived level of competition between potential formateurs moderates the effect of coalition expectations on vote switching. The paper highlights the importance of coalition and formateur considerations in electoral change and contributes to a better understanding of both coalition-directed voting and individual-level vote switching.

An institutional safety net? How electoral institutions mediate the fortunes of parties under threat

ABSTRACT How do electoral institutions condition the electoral fortunes of parties under threat? In this article, we examine how Germany’s mixed-member proportional (MMP) system has influenced the vote share of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), a party under threat which has consistently lost votes over the past two decades. Using the 2013 and 2017 waves of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we find that voters are likely to engage in “sincere” vote switching on both the district and party ballots and that they are less likely to engage in “strategic” vote switching when they cast their district votes than when they cast their party votes, which protects SPD district candidates. Moreover, voters who stay with the SPD when casting their district vote are also less likely to switch their party votes, which protects the SPD’s overall vote share. We thus conclude that Germany’s MMP electoral system serves as an institutional safety net for the SPD as a party under threat. Our findings have important implications for understanding the ways in which electoral rules shape voting behavior and how different rules can mediate the decline of parties under threat.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Support for the German AfD: Jumping the Populist Ship or Staying the Course?

Populist parties enjoy stable support in various European countries. The literature on the rise of populism argues that this support especially increases in times of crises. Surprisingly, the German right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) did not increase its support in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the party even lost 2.3 percentage points in the 2021 federal election. We address this puzzle and ask why the AfD has not been able to use the crisis to its advantage. Our main argument in answering this question is that, although the AfD pursued the classic populist strategy of fundamental opposition, the support base of the AfD is strongly divided on the preference towards measures containing the spread of COVID-19. This division is reinforced by individual affectedness by the pandemic. Introducing a novel weekly dataset on voter preferences, we show that the AfD support base is strongly divided on the issue with approval of the government measures being a significant and substantial contributor to vote switching away from the AfD. Using regional-level data and a difference-in-differences approach, we further show that western German regions hit especially hard by the pandemic display a lower AfD vote share than other regions. Our findings have important implications for the impact of exogenous shocks on electoral competition and also on the future of populist parties.

Effects of changes in perceived discrimination during BLM on the 2020 presidential election.

Few Americans change their choice of presidential candidate to a different political party from election to election. This study evaluates whether and in what direction the Black Lives Matter movement affected the small percentage of voters whose presidential votes changed from 2016 to 2020. Six waves of nationally representative probability surveys are used to establish that significant increases in the extent to which Americans perceived discrimination against Blacks and to which people favored more government efforts to address racial inequality both occurred in 2020. Using panel data, results suggest that increases in perceptions of racial inequality significantly increased the probability of vote switching toward the Democratic candidate. Attention to racial injustice also primed voters to rely more heavily on this issue when evaluating candidates.

Rules for Party Subsidies and Electoral Volatility in Latin America

AbstractPrior research has argued that public subsidies for parties matter for explaining electoral volatility, but the empirical results have been inconclusive. This article addresses this puzzle by examining how different rules for direct state funding affect different types of electoral volatility, using data from lower chamber elections in eighteen Latin American countries from 1978 through 2014. Focusing on volatility caused by new party entry and old party exit (party replacement volatility) and volatility caused by vote switching among existing parties (stable party volatility), it finds that countries with less strict eligibility thresholds for party subsidies tend to have lower levels of party replacement volatility. However, the empirical analysis does not provide sufficient evidence that the eligibility thresholds for party subsidies matter for predicting stable party volatility. Overall, this article suggests that less strict eligibility thresholds for party subsidies help produce stable party systems by reducing risks associated with party replacement volatility.

Political returns to ad hoc farm payments?

AbstractThis paper investigates the extent to which ad hoc farm payments made under the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) and the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) affected voting patterns in the 2020 Presidential Election. MFP and CFAP payments were historically unique not only in terms of their magnitude, but also because they were authorized almost entirely by the incumbent Administration of President Donald Trump without direct Congressional authorization or appropriation. Our results indicate that these payments did influence county‐level voting outcomes. The observed response is driven almost exclusively by increased turnout among Trump supporters—we do not observe evidence that ad hoc payments generated widespread “vote switching” away from the Democratic or third‐party candidates and toward Trump. We find the MFP and CFAP programs generated 677,512 votes for Republican candidate Trump in the 2020 Presidential Election with an estimated cost‐per‐vote‐gained of $66,124. These votes induced by ad hoc farm payments were insufficient to change electoral college outcomes in any U.S. state.

Changing Votes, Changing Identities?

AbstractAlthough racial identity is usually assumed to be unchanging, recent research shows otherwise. The role of politics in racial identity change has received little attention. Using panel data with waves around two recent presidential elections, this article reveals survey evidence of racial fluidity and its strong relationship with vote switching patterns. Across several models and robust to various controls, switching from a non-Republican vote in 2012 to a 2016 Republican vote (i.e., non-Romney to Trump) significantly predicts nonwhite to white race change. Among nonwhites who did not vote Republican in 2012, switching to a Republican vote in 2016 increases the probability of adopting a white racial identity from a 0.03 baseline to 0.49, a 1,533 percent increase. Individuals originally identifying as Mixed and Hispanic drive this identity-voting link. A parallel dynamic on the Democratic side—new Democratic voters moving from white to nonwhite identities—does not occur. The systematic relationship between Trump switching and white identity adoption is unlikely to be spurious or due to measurement error, does not appear for the 2008–2012 election period, and makes theoretical sense in light of 2016 campaign rhetoric and trends in political-social identity alignment.

Protest against the politicians: Vote switching in the Italian 2016-2020 constitutional referenda

Referenda provide the opportunity for voters to express political economic protest and provide additional ways to support parties they vote for in elections. Alternatively, referenda also provide voters a chance to express their policy references in a way that does not affect which party will lead the government. The rejection of the 2016 Italian Constitutional referendum by 60% of voters and the approval the 2020 Italian Constitutional Referendum by 70% of voters could be a result of changing political economic conditions, influences related to partisanship and party leadership, or a change in approval of the reforms contained within the referendum. The article examines these possibilities in turn and then in a multivariate analysis. First, the overall change in economic discontent, satisfaction with the governing coalition and leaders, and belief in the content of the reforms between 2016 and 2020 will be examined. We also examine the how voters of each of the parties in the 2018 general election shifted on these variables. Then individual level analysis of consistent voters and switchers will assess the relative strength of partisanship, economic, political, and referendum-specific factors in convincing voters to switch their vote. We find that referendum-specific factors had the strongest predictive power followed by those related to government approval. Voters approved of the contents that would reduce the number of politicians in Italy and used the referendum to express support or displeasure with the incumbent’s policy programme. Our results contribute to the studies on second-order elections where voters are allowed for greater expressive preferences.

Vote Switching in Multiparty Presidential Systems: Evidence from the Argentine Chamber of Deputies

Why do legislators switch their votes between the committee and floor stages in multiparty presidential systems? The literature on the US Congress has argued that switches are conditional on cross-cutting pressures by competing principals (i.e., party leaders and interest groups), partisanship, electoral competitiveness, ideology, seniority, and informational updates. This article argues that unlike in the US two-party system, in multiparty systems electoral competitiveness increases the likelihood of switching. Additionally, the practice of switching is more likely for legislators whose competing principals are leaders with conflicting electoral interests. We test these hypotheses analyzing vote switches between committee reports and roll-call votes in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies. Our results indicate that legislative vote switching indeed behaves differently in multiparty than in a two-party presidential system.