Abstract
How does a dramatic shift in political context that renders security concerns the most salient electoral issue influence voting? To address this question, we take advantage of the peculiar timing of elections and heightened terror attacks in Turkey with the use of original panel data. The June 2015 Turkish general election resulted in a hung parliament, and a snap election was held in November. While the period before June was relatively calm, the inter-election period witnessed an upsurge of terror attacks and casualties. A three-wave panel enables us to track how voters’ electoral preferences changed over this period. Our analyses suggest that the terror attacks led voters to prioritize parties’ perceived competence in addressing security concerns at the ballot box. The abrupt change in issue salience has bolstered support for the incumbent Justice and Development Party which was evaluated by voters as more competent than other parties.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
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.
