What do voters do when they prefer a leader from another party?

Abstract

There is little research on voters who display incongruent preferences, that is, those who prefer a leader from another party than their preferred one. We address two questions. How many voters prefer a leader from another party? Do these incongruent voters vote for their preferred party or leader? We use the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) data sets covering 83 legislative elections over a time period of 20 years (1996–2016). We find that 17% of the electorate typically prefer a leader from another party. In that group, the vast majority (80%) end up supporting their preferred party while 20% of voters support their preferred leader. We find that partisans and those located at the extremes of the political spectrum tend to have more congruent preferences. Moreover, the proportion of incongruent voters who cast their vote for their preferred leader is higher in less established and less polarized countries as well as among non-partisans. We discuss the implications of our findings for our understanding of the role of parties and leaders in contemporary democracies.

Keywords

Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES)leaders political parties vote choice

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aalberg

Ströbäck

de Vreese

(2012) The framing of politics as strategy and game: a review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings. Journalism 13(2): 162–178.

Aardal

Binder

(2011) Leader effects and party characteristics. In: Aarts

Blais

Schmitt

(eds), Political Leaders and Democratic Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 108–126.

Adam

Maier

(2010) Personalization of politics. A critical review and agenda for research. Annals of International Communication Association 34(1): 213–257.

Bittner

(2011) Platform or Personality? The Role of Party Leaders in Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bittner

(2018) Leaders always mattered: the persistence of personality in Canadian elections. Electoral Studies 54: 297–302.

Blais

Daoust

J-F

(2017) What do voters do when they like a local candidate from another party? Canadian Journal of Political Science 50(4): 1103–1109.

Campbell

Converse

Miller

, et al. (1960) The American Voter. New York: Wiley.

Carty

Cross

(2006) Can stratarchically organized parties be democratic? The Canadian case. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 16(2): 93–114.

Converse

(1969) Of time and partisan stability. Comparative Political Studies 2: 139–171.

10.

Cross

Blais

(2012) Politics at the Centre: The Selection and Removal of Party Leaders in the Anglo Parliamentary Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

11.

Curtice

Hunjan

(2011) Elections as beauty contests: do the rules matter? In: Aarts

Blais

Schmitt

(eds), Political Leaders and Democratic Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 91–108.

12.

Dalton

(2008) The quantity and the quality of party systems: party system polarization, its measurement and its consequences. Comparative Political Studies 41: 899–920.

13.

Dalton

McAllister

Wattenberg

(2000) The consequences of partisan dealignment. In: Dalton

Wattenberg

(eds), Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 19–36.

14.

Dalton

Wattenberg

(2002) Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

15.

Downs

(1957) An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.

16.

Garzia

(2014) Personalization of Politics and Electoral Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

17.

Gidengil

Blais

(2007) Are party leaders becoming more important to vote choice in Canada. In: Michelmann

Story

Steeves

(eds), Political Leadership and Representation in Canada: Essays in Honour of John C. Courtney. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 39–59.

18.

Hazan

Rahat

(2010) Democracy Within Parties: Candidate Selection Methods and Their Political Consequences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

19.

Holmberg

Oscarsson

(2011) Party leader effects on the vote. In: Aarts

Blais

Schmitt

(eds), Political Leaders and Democratic Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 35–51.

20.

Karvonen

(2012) The Personalisation of Politics. A Study of Parliamentary Democracies. Colchester: ECPR Press.

21.

Kefford

(2013) The presidentialisation of Australian politics? Kevin Rudd’s leadership of the Australian Labor Party. Australian Journal of Political Science 48(2): 135–146.

22.

Kriesi

(2012) Personalization of national election campaigns. Party Politics 18(6): 825–844.

23.

Langer

(2007) A historical exploration of the personalisation of politics in the print media: the British Prime Ministers (1945-1999). Parliamentary Affairs 60(3): 371–387.

24.

Lewis-Beck

Norpoth

Jacoby

, et al. (2008) The American Voter Revisited. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

25.

Lipset

Rokkan

(1967) Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives. New York: Free Press.

26.

Lobo

(2006) Short-term voting determinants in a young democracy: leader effects in Portugal in the 2002 legislative elections. Electoral Studies 25: 270–286.

27.

Lodge

Taber

(2013) The Rationalizing Voter. New York: Cambridge University Press.

28.

Lupu

(2015) Party polarization and mass partisanship: a comparative perspective. Political Behavior 37(2): 331–356.

29.

Marcus

Neuman

Mackuen

(2000) Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

30.

McAllister

(2007) The personalization of politics. In: Dalton

Klingemann

H-D

(eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 571–588.

31.

Passarelli

(ed) (2015). The Presidentialization of Political Parties: Organizations, Institutions and Leaders. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

32.

Plasser

Lengauer

(2008) Television campaigning worldwide. In: Johnson

(ed), Handbook of Political Management. London: Routledge, pp. 253–271.

33.

Rahat

Scheafer

(2007) The personalization(s) of politics: Israel, 1949-2003. Political Communication 24(1): 65–80.

34.

Rogowski

Sutherland

(2016) How ideology fuels affective polarization. Political Behavior 38: 485–508.

35.

Strömbäck

Aalberg

(2008) Election news coverage in democratic corporatist countries: a comparative study of Sweden and Norway. Scandinavian Political Studies 31(1): 91–106.

36.

Toner

Leary

Asher

, et al. (2013) Feeling superior is a bipartisan issue: extremity (not direction) of political views predicts perceived belief superiority. Psychological Science 24(12): 2454–2462.

37.

Tverdova

(2011) Follow the party of follow the leader? Candidate evaluations, party evaluations, and macropolitical context. In: Dalton

Anderson

(eds), Citizens, Context, and Choice: How Context Shapes Citizens’ Electoral Choices. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 126–148.

38.

Van Aelst

Sheafer

Stanyer

(2011) The personalization of mediated political communication: a review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings. Journalism 13(2): 203–220.

39.

Van Biezen

Mair

Poguntke

(2012) Going, going…gone? The decline of party membership in contemporary Europe. European Journal of Political Research 51(1): 24–56.

40.

Webb

Poguntke

(2013) The presidentialisation of politics thesis defended. Parliamentary Affairs 66(3): 646–654.

41.

Zaller

(1992) Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.69 MB