Partisan dealignment has been frequently advanced as a pivotal driver of the personalization of voting behavior. As voters’ long-term attachments with parties have eroded, it is argued that partisanship has lost importance relative to short-term factors, like voters’ evaluations of party leaders. Such theoretical reasoning has been applied recurrently in research dedicated to explaining vote choice. However, we hypothesize that dealignment can downplay partisanship’s impact vis-à-vis leaders in the same way regarding turnout decisions. This article aims at demonstrating the importance of voters’ evaluations of party leaders in their probability to turn out in parliamentary elections through a novel data set pooling 52 national election surveys from 13 Western European parliamentary democracies between 1974 and 2016. The results confirm the increasing relevance of leaders in explaining turnout decisions and a decline of partisanship’s mobilizing ability. These trends are further accentuated among individuals with a television-dominated media diet, demonstrating the role of media change in driving this process.
AbramsonPRAldrichJH (1982) The decline of electoral participation in America. American Political Science Review76(3): 502–521.
2.
BalmasMRahatGSheaferT, et al. (2014) Two routes to personalized politics: centralized and decentralized personalization. Party Politics20(1): 37–351.
3.
BaltzSNevitteN (2017) Affective dissonance, leader evaluations and voter turnout. Paper presented at the 2017 Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association.
4.
BartelsL (2000) Partisanship and voting behavior, 1952-1996. American Journal of Political Science44(1): 35–50.
5.
BeanCMughanA (1989) Leadership effects in parliamentary elections in Australia and Britain. American Political Science Review83(4): 1165–1179.
6.
BischofD (2017) New Graphic Schemes for Stata: plotplain & plottig. The Stata Journal, 17(3): 748–759.
7.
BittnerA (2011) Platform or Personality? The Role of Party Leaders in Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
8.
BrodyRAGrofmanB (1982) Stimulus differentiation versus stimulus complexity as factors affecting turnout in two-candidate and multicandidate races. Political Behavior4(1): 83–92.
9.
BrodyRAPageBI (1973) Indifference, alientation and rational decisions: the effects of candidate evaluations on turnout and the vote. Public Choice15(Summer, 1973): 1–17.
10.
BudgeIFarlieD (2010) A comparative analysis of factors correlated with turnout and voting choice. In: BudgeICreweIFarlieD (eds) Party Identification and Beyond: representations of voting and party competition. Essex: ECPR Press, pp. 103–126.
11.
CampbellAConversePEMillerWE, et al. (1960) The American Voter. New Yok: Wiley.
12.
CampbellAConversePEMillerWE, et al. (1966) Elections and the Political Order. New York: Wiley.
13.
ClarkeHSandersDStewartM, et al. (2004) Political Choice in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
14.
ConversePE (1966) The concept of the normal vote. In: CampbellAConversePEMillerWEStokesDE (eds) Elections and the Political Order. New York: Wiley, pp. 9–39.
15.
CurticeJHolmbergS (2005) Party leaders and party choice. In: ThomassenJ (ed) The European Voter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 235–252.
16.
DaltonRJ (2000) The decline of party identifications. In: DaltonRJWattenbergMP (eds.) Parties Without Partisans: political change in advanced industrial democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 19–36.
17.
DaltonRJ (2007) Partisan mobilization, cognitive mobilization, and the changing American electorate. Electoral Studies26(2): 274–286.
18.
DaltonRJ (2013) The Apartisan American: Dealignment and the Transformation of Electoral Polities. Washington: CQ Press.
19.
DaltonRJWattenbergMP (eds) (2000) Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
20.
DownsA (1957) An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper & Row.
21.
DruckmanJN (2003) The power of television images: the first Kennedy-Nixon debate revisited. The Journal of Politics65(2): 559–571.
22.
FiorinaMP (1981) Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press.
23.
FiorinaMP (1990) Information and Rationality in Elections. In FerejohnJKuklinskiJ (eds) Information and Democratic Processes. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, pp. 329–342.
24.
FlickingerRSStudlarDT (1992) The disappearing voters? Exploring declining turnout in western European elections. West European Politics15(2): 1–16.
25.
FranklinMN (2004) Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies Since 1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
26.
GarziaD (2013) The rise of party/leader identification in western Europe. Political Research Quarterly66(3): 533–544.
27.
GarziaD (2014) Personalization of Politics and Electoral Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
28.
GarziaDSilvaFFDe AngelisA (2018) Partisan Dealignment and the Personalization of Politics in West European Parlamentary Democracies, 1961-2016. UC Irvine: Center for the Study of Democracy. Retrieved fromhttps://escholarship.org/uc/item/8r7500zq
29.
GidengilE (2011) Voter characteristics and leader effects. In AartsKBlaisASchmittH (eds) Political Leaders and Democratic Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 147–165.
30.
GrabeMEBucyEP (2009) Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
31.
HayesD (2009) Has television personalized voting behavior?Political Behavior31(2): 231–260.
32.
HeathD (2007) Explaining turnout decline in Britain, 1964-2005: Party identification and the political context. Political Behavior29(4): 493–516.
33.
HeathDJowellRCurticeJ (1985) How Britain Votes. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
34.
HolmbergSOscarssonH (2011) Party leader effects on the vote. In AartsKBlaisASchmittH (eds) Political Leaders and Democratic Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 35–50.
35.
KarvonenL (2010) The Personalisation of Politics: a Study of Parliamentary Democracies. Colchester: ECPR Press.
36.
KingA (ed) (2002) Leaders’ Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
37.
KriesiH (2012) Personalization of national election campaigns. Party Politics18(6): 825–844.
38.
LenzGSLawsonC (2011) Looking the part: Television leads less informed citizens to vote based on candidates’ appearance. American Journal of Political Science55(3): 574–589.
39.
LoboMCCurticeJ (2014) Personality Politics? The Role of Leader Evaluations in Democratic Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
40.
MairP (2013) Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy. New York: Verso.
41.
MarkusGBConversePE (1979) A dynamic simultaneous equation model of electoral choice. American Political Science Review73(4): 1055–1070.
42.
McAllisterI (2007) Personalization of politics. In DaltonRJKlingemannHD (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 571–588.
43.
McLeodJGlynnCMcDonaldD (1983) Issues and images: the influence of media reliance in voting decisions. Communication Research10(1): 37–58.
44.
MendelsohnM (1996) The media and interpersonal communications: the priming of issues, leaders, and party identification. The Journal of Politics58(1): 112–125.
45.
MughanA (2010) Media and the Presidentialization of Parliamentary Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
46.
PoguntkeTWebbP (eds.) (2005) The Presidentialization of Politics: a Comparative Study of Modern Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
47.
PriorM (2009) The immensely inflated news audience: assessing bias in self-reported news exposure. Public Opinion Quarterly73(1): 130–143.
48.
PruysersSCrossW (2016) Research note: “Negative” personalization: party leaders and party strategy. Canadian Journal of Political Science49(3): 539–558.
49.
RahatGKenigO (2018) From Party Politics to Personalized Politics?: Party Change and Political Personalization in Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
50.
RahatGSheaferT (2007) The personalization(s) of politics: Israel, 1949-2003. Political Communication24(1): 65–80.
51.
RicoG (2014) Political sophistication and media consumption as factors of personalization. In LoboMCCurticeJ (eds) Personality Politics? The Role of Leader Evaluations in Democratic Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 127–146.
52.
RosenbergSWBohanLMcCaffertyP, et al. (1986) The image and the vote: the effect of candidate presentation on voter preference. American Journal of Political Science30(1): 108–127.
53.
SartoriG (1989) Video-power. Government and Opposition24(1): 39–53.
54.
ShehataAStrömbäckJ (2011) A matter of context: a comparative study of media environments and news consumption gaps in Europe. Political Communication28(1): 110–134.
SilvaFFCostaP (2019) Do we need warm leaders? Exploratory study of the role of voter evaluations of leaders’ traits on turnout in seven European countries. European Journal of Political Research58(1): 117–140.
57.
TodorovAMandisodzaANGorenA, et al. (2005) Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science308(5728): 1623–1626.
58.
WattenbergMP (1991) The Rise of Candidate-centered Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
59.
WattenbergMP (2002) The decline of party mobilization. In: DaltonRJWattenbergMP (eds.), Parties Without Partisans: political change in advanced industrial democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 64–75.
60.
WeisbergHFGrofmanB (1981) Candidate evaluations and turnout. American Politics Quarterly9(2): 197–219.
61.
ZippJF (1985) Perceived representativeness and voting: an assessment of the impact of ‘choices’ vs. ‘echoes’. American Political Science Review79(1): 20–61.
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.
