Voting decisions are influenced by electoral systems, particularly when voters are dissatisfied. Plurality rule electoral systems tend to restrict the number of effective parties. As a consequence, people may often vote for a party not because of its attraction but because of a lack of a genuinely preferred alternative - to wit, protest voting. Similarly people will often confront specific choices between abstaining and an unsatisfactory vote in plurality-rule electoral systems. The purpose of this article is to explore the logic of protest voting and abstaining by employing a public choice approach. Adapting Hirshman's approach for voting behaviour, this article focuses on the variable `quality' provided by political parties, i.e. the quality-satisficing approach. This approach allows us to frame a comprehensive explanation of the choices between protest voting and abstention, which in existing often seem discrete or unrelated.
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