Electoral Competitiveness and Issue Voting

Abstract

This article suggests that voters rely more strongly on ''substantial'' criteria, such as issues and ideology, when elections are competitive. In such contexts, voters should attach more importance to their own choice and rely less on ''heuristics.'' Three aspects of election competitiveness are considered: the fragmentation and polarization of the party system and the proportionality of the electoral system. Elections are more competitive when there are many parties in competition, when they differ strongly from one another in ideological terms, and when the threshold of representation is lower. These hypotheses are tested with data from the 2007 Swiss federal elections. The electoral districts differ markedly from one another as far as electoral competitiveness is concerned while being similar in many other respects. The results show that competitiveness strengthens issue voting and reduces the impact of party identification.

Vote as you Think: Determinants of Consistent Decision Making in Direct Democracy

“…In line with recent work on the cognitive basis of electoral behavior (e.g. Kriesi 2005; Mondak et al 2010;Lachat 2011;Nai 2014a) we expect those conditions to be found both at the individual and information environment level. At the individual level, we argue that political knowledge positively affects consistent decisions.…”

Do VAAs Encourage Issue Voting and Promissory Representation? Evidence From the Swiss Smartvote

“…Voters develop easy ways to make up their minds. Rather than engaging in a rational comparison of the parties’ various positions with their own preferences, they rely on simpler decision‐making strategies called heuristics (Lachat, ) or shortcuts. Heuristics are easily available pieces of information that allow for decision making without processing a huge amount of information.…”

A Cross-National Measure of Electoral Competitiveness

“…Voters, for their part, purportedly hold representatives more accountable (Canes-Wrone, Brady and Cogan, 2002), turn out to vote in greater numbers (Powell, 1986;Selb, 2009) and weigh both incumbent performance (Koch, 1998) and issues (Lachat, 2011) more when elections are competitive. In combination with other innovations in political measurement, theoretically important relationships can also be tested for the first time cross-nationally.…”