Voting experience in a new era: The impact of past eligibility on the breakdown of mainstream parties

Abstract

This paper studies the influence of the context in shaping the effects on later voting behavior of first experiences with voting. I leverage from changes in the political context in Spain produced by the Great Recession to answer whether individuals’ first voting experience affects the electoral support for mainstream parties differently depending on the different political context that first voters experienced before and after the Great Recession. I use a novel database of pre-electoral surveys between 2000 and 2015 and a difference-in-differences analysis. I exploit the exogenous variation produced by the legal voting-age threshold in Spain (18 years-old) among people of the same cohort. I find that, after the Great Recession, second-time eligibility voters have a higher probability to vote for mainstream forces than their counterfactual equals. The results show that, in a context of political change, first voting experience strengthens the vote for mainstream parties. The results show that previous voting experience creates favorable inertia for mainstream parties that slow down the change of a political system.

Keywords

First-time voting voting experience mainstream parties Spain difference-in-differences

Introduction

Research in Political Science has increasingly been paying attention to the so-called “voting shock” or first voting experience (Bhatti et al., 2016; Brown, 2021; De Kadt, 2017). Exposure to elections has been considered as the germ of habitual vote formation (Coppock and Green, 2016) or as a barrier for change in current electoral patterns (Holbein and Rangel, 2020). Despite the amount of research on the topic, there is still a debate in the literature about what is the impact of previous experience with voting across different specific political and institutional contexts (Bhatti et al., 2016; Dunaiski, 2021; Górecki, 2013). These recent papers suggest that the institutional context under which the first experience with voting happens modifies the effects that such experience may have in the future. Along these lines, this literature finds that first experience with voting might not always have relevant effects or that it may have more durable or intense effects depending on the context in which voting socialization happens.

Analyzing the effects of first experiences with voting in different contexts becomes particularly relevant given recent phenomena such as the decline of mainstream parties (Hernández and Kriesi, 2016; De Vries and E. Hobolt, 2020) or the emergence of new political cleavages (Ford and Jennings, 2020) which could be, at least partially, explained by the context in which political socialization happens for different cohorts of voters. In addition, answering questions such as why and how the decline of traditional parties occurs is relevant because it may lead to revisiting classic questions such as why party systems were so stable in the past (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967).

Within this framework, this article makes three main contributions to existing literature. First, it shows how the impact of voting experience is shaped by the context, and by economic and political events. Second, it offers evidence of the operation of voting experience as a mechanism that slows down party system change in a context conducive to it. Third, the effects of experience with voting on slowing down party system change provide a complementary explanation of why changes in the political system occur slowly (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967).

I study voting shocks in Spain between 2000 and 2015 using pre-electoral survey data from the Spanish Sociological Research Center (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, CIS). I use a quasi-experimental design to study how contextual changes shape the effects of first experiences with voting on subsequent electoral behavior. Spain provides an excellent opportunity to exploit a natural experiment due to its contextual change in the period before and after the Great Recession. Amidst the Great Recession, Spain suffered a political system crisis that affected the popularity of mainstream parties (De Vries and E. Hobolt, 2020; Orriols and Cordero, 2016; Vidal, 2018). As a result, several new parties gained substantial electoral support over time. In this context, I analyze whether experience with voting has a causal effect on electoral behavior, and in particular, on the support for mainstream parties.

My empirical strategy leverages detailed pre-election surveys that allow me to focus on the specific group of individuals (21 years-old in the elections analyzed here) who were around the eligibility threshold (18 years-old) in the previous election. CIS surveys contain information about which individuals of 21 years old were eligible in the previous election and which ones were not. Exploiting this information, I distinguish individuals that were just short of 18 in the previous election and, thus, were not able to vote, and those that were eligible just by days or weeks. I, therefore, identify two groups within otherwise equal individuals of 21: second-time and first-time eligible. Both groups are exposed to the same external influences, but they diverge in their voting eligibility in the previous general election. As eligibility is determined by the random event of the exact birthday, individuals’ first-time voting experience occurred, just by chance, under different contextual circumstances, allowing me to identify the causal effect of being previously eligible. Thus, the hypothesis tested here is that in a context of mainstream parties’ decline, previous experience with voting anchors the vote to mainstream parties of those who have already voted, slowing down the speed at which new parties become viable options.

I find that this is indeed the pattern that emerged after the Great Recession (a context of party system change) leading as a result to a different effect of first voting experience on electoral support for mainstream parties. While until 2008, before the Great Recession and the surge of new challenger parties, both the first timers and the second timers show a similar electoral support for mainstream parties, after 2008, once the popularity of mainstream parties start to decrease, their vote choice differs significantly in the two elections following the Great Recession: 2011 and 2015. First-time voters are significantly less likely to vote for mainstream parties compared to same age voters that are eligible for the second time. This finding supports my main hypothesis that voting experience works as an anchor to established parties and shows that voting experience in this context slows down political change.

Previous work and theoretical argument

A significant proportion of previous work on the effects of voting experience has been aimed at demonstrating the mere existence of such effects. This literature has shown that prior exposure to elections is a significant predictor of future voting behavior. Exposure to elections—or political socialization, Meredith (2009)—strengthens political identities (Dinas, 2014a; Franklin, 2004; Franklin and van Spanje, 2012), creates a habit of voting in the future, increasing turnout (De Kadt, 2017; Dinas and Riera, 2018; Franklin, 2004a; Franklin, 2004c; Gerber et al., 2003; Green and Shachar, 2000; Plutzer, 2002; Shachar, 2003), and shapes the age cleavage (Bhatti and Hansen, 2012), generating behaviors that differ between old—most experienced and young—still being formed voters (Achen, 2002; Franklin and Van Spanje, 2012; Van der Brug and Franklin, 2004). Furthermore, previous experience with voting also affects early voters’ attitudes (Mullainathan and Washington, 2009; Schulte-Cloos, 2019), the likelihood to vote for populist parties (Aassve et al., 2022) and the vote for minor parties in the case of first-time exposure to a second-order election (Dinas and Riera, 2018).

An emerging body of literature has put into question some of the above findings, opening new debates on the effects of voting experience (Bhatti et al., 2016; Bechtel et al., 2018; Dunaiski, 2021; Górecki, 2013). Some studies have found that effects of previous experience on political engagement or turnout might not be as large as previously thought (Holbein and Rangel, 2020; Jessen et al., 2021). Some others have provided evidence that the impact of previous voting differs, and might not even exist, depending on the context in which political socialization happens. For example, experience does not seem to affect voting in political systems with compulsory voting (Bhatti et al., 2016; Dunaiski, 2021). Thus, the effect of prior experience with voting might be conditioned by the institutional framework, the social context or the political environment, being still an open question which specific contextual characteristics (e.g., election type or its salience) affect the impact of prior experience with voting on electoral behavior (Dinas, 2017; Franklin and Van Spanje, 2012).

In this article, I show how voting experience shapes voting in a changing political context and whether this effect goes beyond the vote itself. My research contributes to the literature by presenting an analysis of whether and how previous experience with voting affects the probability of voting for mainstream parties in a context of decreasing support for them. Additionally, I provide a novel explanation about why in many circumstances political system changes occur quite slowly. The main argument is that voting experience has a different impact depending on the political context, making experienced voters more likely to maintain previous voting behavior when contextual changes that could favor a change in political behavior occur. The context that leads to a change in behavior of experienced versus non-experienced voters, in my case, is the economic and political crisis surrounding the Great Recession. The change in the context creates a difference between first-time eligible voters and second-time eligible voters. A likely mechanism that might explain such an effect is that experienced voters, who are potentially affected by cognitive dissonance, will exhibit greater support for mainstream parties over time. Cognitive dissonance is the psychological tension or constraint that past behavior imposes on current behavior. In the face of a persuasive external influence, such as a social context change that is more adverse to the mainstream parties, the lack of experience makes first-time voters more sensitive to external shocks and more permeable to new political options since they are not constrained by the dissonance that previous voting behavior may induce on current behavior. Therefore, first-time voters, who do not experience any cognitive dissonance, simply because they were not eligible in the previous elections, will be more likely to vote for challenger parties.

Although there were many changes in Spaniards’ electoral behavior as a consequence of the Great Recession, the hypothesis posited by this article is that it took longer for these changes to affect the political system due to the role of previous experience with voting. Consequently, although the new contextual situation that emerged during the 2008 Great Recession created a window of opportunity for the success of new parties (Hernández and Kriesi, 2016; Kriesi and Schulte-Cloos, 2020), previous voting experience slowed down political change.

The decline of mainstream parties and the party system breakup in Spain

In recent years, we have witnessed a global collapse of mainstream parties in many contexts (Hernández and Kriesi, 2016; Abou-Chadi and Krause, 2018; De Vries and E. Hobolt, 2020). Several studies point out parties’ policy positions, their political communication strategies, and their limited ability to adapt to recent changes in citizens’ political attitudes as the main reasons of their decline. Spain is a prominent example of the globally widespread phenomenon of the downfall of mainstream parties’ support. However, it is not the only case: similar trends are observed in many other countries such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, or Portugal (De Vries and E. Hobolt, 2020: p. 37).

There are two elements that underline the suitability of Spain as a case of study. On the one hand, the collapse in the support of mainstream parties has affected both left-wing and right-wing parties at the same time. On the other hand, the fall has been sizable enough so as to modify the party system. Until 2011, the main elements of Spain’s political system include the continuity of the same parties and the alternation in national office between the center-right People’s Party (PP) and the center-left Socialist Party (PSOE). Therefore, I classify parties as mainstream or challengers based on whether they have participated in a cabinet (Hobolt and Tilley, 2016; De Vries and E. Hobolt, 2020). This is similar to the niche-mainstream parties’ classification used broadly in the literature (Abou-Chadi and Krause, 2018; Adams et al., 2006; Hernández and Kriesi, 2016). Having government experience provides parties with the ability to implement policies based on their strong electoral support. In contrast, those that have not governed, challenger parties, can only propose policies, but not directly implement them. Moreover, another system feature that is worth noting has been the continued presence of regionalist parties in sub-national governments. In a decentralized country such as Spain, sub-national institutions share the legislative and executive power with the national branch. For this reason, it seems reasonable, and consistent with established definitions of mainstream parties, to also consider as such those that have been dominant at the regional level before political change, despite having a small representation at the national level (i.e., the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), Convergence and Union (CIU) from Catalonia, Canarian Coalition (CC), and the Regionalist Party of Cantabria (PRC)). Since the beginning of the Great Recession, there has been a decrease in support for parties with governmental experience in Spain. During this new period, grassroots movements perceived mainstream parties as part of a flawed political system in need of modernization. This unusual political context led mainstream parties to lose 43% of their votes. While in 2008 mainstream parties had obtained about 88% of overall support, their electoral performance was around 54% in December 2015 (see Figure 1). Running parallel with the electoral fall of mainstream parties, several new challenger parties such as We Can (Podemos) and Citizens (Ciudadanos) in 2015 registered unprecedented support. While it is not this article’s purpose to examine the economic and political determinants of this phenomenon, factors such as economic austerity policies, the bursting of the real estate bubble, high unemployment rates, unpopular labor reforms, and the large number of corruption cases are often cited as the reasons for the loss of electoral support of traditional parties (Hernández and Kriesi, 2016; Hernández, 2018; Hobolt and Tilley, 2016; Orriols and Cordero, 2016; Vidal, 2018).

Figure 1.

Decline in Mainstream parties’ support over time. It represents the voters’ support in percentage for mainstream (solid olive green) and challenger (dashed coral) parties from 2000 through 2015. Despite the mainstream parties’ electoral decline beginning in 2011 amidst the Great Recession, the two-party system remained in place until the 2015 election, when We Can (Podemos) and Citizens (Ciudadanos) made their first entrance into the Spanish parliament.

Research design

One of the main difficulties of analyzing voting experience is to disentangle the influence of age from the voting experience itself. The identification strategy I use in this paper aims to control as much as possible age’s influence taking advantage of the sharp division of voters of the same age into two groups due to voting eligibility thresholds. I exploit a natural experiment in which voting experience functions as an exogenous treatment or intervention due to the voting age cutoff that differentiates the treatment and control groups. Because I look at individuals of the same cohort (21 years old at the time of the survey), the two groups are very similar, the only difference between them being that some of them were able to vote due to their birth date. In other words, there are no significant differences between them in terms of demographics (see Table 1) and they only present variation in terms of their previous exposure to voting: While first-time eligible were not allowed to vote in the previous election because their 18^th birthday was at least one day after the election, second-time eligible individuals were allowed to vote because their 18^th birthday was on the same day or before the election. The research design is similar to the ones used by previous studies in the literature on early exposure to elections (Meredith, 2009; Mullainathan and Washington, 2009). In the present case, those who are 21 years-old at the time of the survey are pivotal because they were subject to the voting eligibility cutoff in the preceding election. Because pre-election surveys are conducted some weeks before the election some of the 21-years-old were already 18 years-old at the time of the previous election (treatment group). For other 21-years-old individuals at the time of the survey, the election under consideration in the survey was their first election because they were a few days, weeks, or months short of being 18 at the time of the last election (control group). To disentangle who of the 21-year-old individuals were previously eligible, I exploit the survey response to the question of whether or not the respondent was eligible to vote in the previous election due to being over/under the minimum voting age. Note that this question is only relevant the 21-year-old cohort, as individuals one year younger are all of them first-time eligible and individuals one year older are all of them second-time eligible. This is important because, for example, in the case of 2008 the treated individuals in my sample had voted for the first time in a favorable context for mainstream parties (2004), same as their controls, while from 2011 on-wards individuals voted in a context of high political discontent against traditional mainstream forces. If context moderated the effects of experience with voting, I would expect a change in the trend and the differences in voting experience to emerge right after 2008. I use data from the pre-election surveys conducted in the period 2000–2015 by the Spanish Center of Sociological Research right before each general election.¹ The sample is a repeated cross-sectional database of 21-years-old, and the main variable of analysis is their intention to vote for mainstream parties in the 2000, 2004, 2008, 2011, and 2015 election.² Since the CIS details the age of respondents but not their date of birth, to discern which individuals belong to the treatment group (second-time eligible) or the control (first-time eligible voters), in addition to the age of the individual, I rely on the information coming from the question on whether the respondent met the age requirements to vote in the previous election or not.

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics and balance.

	1st timers (C)			2nd timers (T)
	n	mean	sd	n	mean	sd	min	max	diff
2000–2015 Educational attainment	901	3.44	0.99	517	3.48	1.06	2	7	0.036
2000–2015 Gender	902	0.48	0.50	518	0.50	0.50	0	1	0.019
2000–2015 District	902	24.78	14.89	518	24.13	14.86	1	5	−0.650
2000–2015 Municipality size	902	3.64	1.44	518	3.79	1.45	1	7	0.147*
2000 Educational attainment	280	3.46	1.06	160	3.49	1.12	2	7	0.029
2000 Gender	280	0.52	0.50	160	0.54	0.50	0	1	0.020
2000 Age	280	21.00	0.00	160	21.00	0.00	21	21	0.000
2000 District	280	24.05	14.76	160	24.84	14.57	1	52	0.787
2000 Municipality size	280	3.74	1.41	160	3.91	1.37	1	7	0.167
2004 Educational attainment	228	3.38	1.06	132	3.39	1.07	2	5	0.017
2004 Gender	228	0.50	0.50	132	0.46	0.50	0	1	−0.038
2004 Age	228	21.00	0.00	132	21.00	0.00	21	21	0.000
2004 District	228	25.06	15.05	132	24.20	15.62	1	52	−0.852
2004 Municipality size	228	3.75	1.52	132	3.98	1.39	1	7	0.232
2008 Educational attainment	169	3.48	1.00	75	3.43	1.04	2	5	−0.053
2008 Gender	169	0.43	0.50	76	0.59	0.49	0	1	0.160**
2008 Age	169	21.00	0.00	76	21.00	0.00	21	21	0.000
2008 District	169	24.52	14.68	76	22.00	15.09	1	52	−2.521
2008 Municipality size	169	3.63	1.52	76	3.66	1.45	1	7	0.031
2011 Educational attainment	91	3.46	0.96	102	3.63	1.09	2	5	0.166
2011 Gender	91	0.52	0.50	102	0.46	0.50	0	1	−0.056
2011 Age	91	21.00	0.00	102	21.00	0.00	21	21	0.000
2011 District	91	25.24	15.51	102	24.43	14.21	1	52	−0.810
2011 Municipality size	91	3.22	1.35	102	3.63	1.73	1	7	0.408*
2015 Educational attainment	133	3.44	0.73	48	3.38	0.84	1	5	−0.069
2015 Gender	134	0.43	0.50	48	0.46	0.50	0	1	0.025
2015 Age	134	21.00	0.00	48	21.00	0.00	21	21	0.000
2015 District	134	25.83	14.83	48	24.27	14.92	1	52	−1.558
2015 Municipality size	134	3.54	1.29	48	3.40	1.16	1	7	−0.149

***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.10. The diff. column displays the coefficient of a bivariate regression of treatment status on each of the variables.

As Table 1 confirms, there are minimal compositional differences between these two groups. Hence, experienced and novel voters are affected by the same external factors and are subject to parallel political, social, and economic conditions, the only difference between them being that treated individuals had an early voting experience. Since individuals are similar in observed and unobserved factors and assignment into the treatment or control is based on birth date, a random event, the natural experiment fulfills regular validity assumptions (Sekhon and Titiunik, 2012; Titiunik, 2021). Thus, the comparison between both groups allows to identify the causal effect of early exposure to voting on support for mainstream parties in different contexts. The intention to vote for the major parties is calculated from the survey question about intention to participate in the next election along with the question about which party the individual plans to vote for. The consideration of mainstream or challenger parties is based on the above mentioned operationalization made by the literature (Adams et al., 2006; De Vries and E. Hobolt, 2020) extended also to regional parties.

The core of the empirical strategy is to estimate a difference-in-differences regression. This research design allows for exploring the difference in trends of support for the mainstream parties among voters split by their previous eligibility status, and by whether their first election occurred before or after the contextual change. For the strategy to be valid the identifying assumption is that there are no significant differences in the intention to vote for the mainstream parties among treatment and control groups before the contextual change. Figure 2 shows that the parallel trend assumption is met: second-time eligible—treated group—and first-time eligible—control group—follow a similar pattern of support for mainstream parties before the Great Recession starts.

Figure 2.

Trends in the electoral support for mainstream parties. The red solid line is the average intention to vote for mainstream parties amongst experienced voters, and the blue long-dash depicts the same intention amongst debutant voters. The vertical bands represent the standard errors of each average. The light green dot dash line represents the difference in intention to vote for mainstream parties between 2nd timers and 1st timers over time and vertical bands represent the confidence interval of these differences in means at the 95% confidence interval.

The model is implemented in a regression framework of the following type

Y = β_{0} + β_{1} Exp + β_{2} A f t e r + β_{3} Exp * A f t e r + δ X + ε

(1)

Experienced (Exp) is a dichotomous variable that takes, in each election, value 1 for those voters who were able to vote in the previous election, and 0 for debutant ones; hence, it captures differences between experienced and first-time voters’ probability of voting for mainstream parties before the contextual change. After is a dummy variable that takes value 1 for the entire period after 2008 (i.e., the start of the economic crisis), and 0 otherwise. It captures aggregate-level factors common to treatment and control groups that change the intention to vote for mainstream parties (Y) after 2008. The estimated Average Treatment Effect on Treated (ATT) is captured by β3, the main coefficient of interest. It captures the change in support for mainstream parties between experienced voters and debutant voters following the contextual change. I expect this coefficient to be positive. Finally, X represents a vector of sociodemographic controls.

Findings

Main results

Table 2 shows the primary results of the difference-in-difference estimates, displaying the ATT with and without covariates. The coefficients show that starting in 2011, the first election after the Great Recession, those individuals with previous voting experience are less likely to vote for the challenger parties compared to the control group, and therefore, are more loyal to mainstream parties. The effect of experience is sizable. Second-time voters have a 20.7% higher predisposition to vote for the mainstream parties than their counterparts. When covariates are included to improve the efficiency of the estimation, the effect increases up to 22.5%.

Table 2.

Impact of experience with voting on intention to vote for mainstreams parties.

	(1)	(2)
	Average treatment effect	Average treatment effect
	on treated (ATT)	on treated (ATT)
Experience with voting	0.207*** (0.066)	0.225*** (0.040)
Controls	No	Yes
Electoral Districts FE	Yes	Yes
Observations	1175	1173
R-squared	0.023	0.148

***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.10.

(1) and (2) ordinary least squares (OLS) regression coefficients with clustered standard errors in parentheses.

Further analysis

In this part, I check whether the context changes the effect of experience with voting on other variables beyond voting for the main parties. I run exactly the same model as the main specification (labeled as “treatment”), but instead of voting intention for mainstream parties, I use as dependent variables ideology, political interest, abstention, vote for incumbent, vote for PP, and vote for PSOE. As shown by Figure 3, the lack of significant effects in this test suggests that voting experience only has an impact on the probability of voting for mainstream parties but does not produce further impacts on other political variables. Particularly interesting are the results for the vote for the incumbent, the vote for the PP and the vote for the PSOE. The absence of a statistically significant effect in these five tests reflects how the contextual change affects only the vote for the mainstream parties and not the vote for either party in particular. Furthermore, these results show that the main estimation results are not driven by the effect of a party being part of the government or the policies implemented.

Figure 3.

Falsification tests with placebo outcomes of interest. It represents the ATT of difference-in-differences models using alternative definitions of the treatment group and outcomes. The bands represent the statistical significance in each model at 95% confidence intervals.

Placebo test: The influence of age

The main result of second time eligible voters being less likely to vote for new parties might be generated by an age effect rather than by prior eligibility. This is possible due to the fact that there might be up to a 12 months age difference between individuals that are 21 years-old at the time of the survey. To check that age is not driving the results, I run several falsification tests in which I artificially change the age threshold that leads to classification into treatment and control. I analyze each cohort o voters between 18 and 27 years-old, splitting individuals into treatment and control groups depending on whether they are in the upper or lower age range of each age group. In each of these comparisons, there is no difference in the context under which voters in the artificial treatment and control group had their first voting experience. If the effect I am capturing in the main model is the effect of having prior experience with voting, the only differences in support for the mainstream parties should be seen in this main model. If age is explaining the main results, at least in part, I should see a significant result when I analyze other age thresholds different than 21 years old, for which there is the same age difference between the artificial treatment and control groups, but no difference in eligibility status. Figure 4 shows that age is not driving the main results: the only significant results appear at the 21 year old threshold. These patterns are consistent with a causal interpretation of my main results.

Figure 4.

Falsification tests with placebo age thresholds. It represents the ATT of difference-in-differences models using alternative definitions of the treatment group and outcomes. To perform the age tests, I have only considered individuals that were in the same situation regarding eligibility in previous elections. The bands represent the statistical significance in each model at 95% confidence intervals.

Discussion and concluding remarks

Green and Shachar (2000); Gerber et al. (2003), Dinas (2014b), and Coppock and Green (2016) found empirical evidence that exposure to previous elections generates a positive reinforcement of prior electoral behavior, which is also the seed of voting as a habit. Within this framework, the imprint of the first experience with voting has been found to be crucial for other future voting behaviors (Aassve et al., 2022; Brown, 2021; De Kadt, 2017). My results, together with some other recent works such as Bhatti and Hansen (2012); Bhatti et al. (2016) and Dunaiski (2021), show that some of the previously found effects depend heavily on the context under which the first experience occurs. More specifically, my article shows that in a changing political context experience matters more than in a stable political context.

Another contribution of the article is that it provides results that can be interpreted causally due to the use of a natural experiment: the period of political change that emerged in Spain after the Great Recession. As a similar change occurred in other Southern and Central European countries, my results are potentially generalize. I find that only in the post-Great Recession context voting experience generates a different behavior among otherwise similar voters. One interesting implication of the results is that the electoral punishment to the performance of mainstream parties that occurred in the context of the deep economic recession of the Great Depression, which affected, among others things, the job prospects of young people, is buffered for those who came of voting age before the Great Depression. This is consistent with theories that argue that cognitive dissonance is generated only in the presence of an external persuasive influence (Festinger, 1968; Harmon-Jones and Mills, 2019). The results imply that the lack of voting experience makes first-time eligibility voters more responsive to external shocks in a political system. Due to first-timers not having previously experienced the act of voting, their political identity is less formed, in line with the evidence found by Dinas and Riera (2018), and they are more permeable to new political options.

In addition to extending the knowledge about the relationship between voting experience and the political context, the results of this article have an additional interesting ramification related to how experience shapes the speed at which political changes may occur. In particular, my results show that previous voting experience slows down political change and contributes to the high stability of party systems that Lipset and Rokkan (1967) found some decades ago. Hence, a large social transformation seems to be a prerequisite for modifying the electoral status quo.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

I thank to Carlos III University of Madrid Department of Social Sciences and Instituto Carlos III – Juan March (IC3JM), Complutense University of Madrid Department of Applied, Public and Political Economy and European University Institute for their research support and useful feedback. In particular, I thank to Joaquín Artés, Pedro Riera, Sandra León, Beatriz Rodriguez-Sánchez, Elias Dinas, Amuitz Garmendia, Margarita Torre, Ignacio Jurado, and Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca for their helpful discussions.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and the Spanish State Research Agency (Grant PRE2018-083918 & CSO2017-82881-R), from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and Spanish State Research Agency (Grant PID2020-119460RB-I00) and from Spanish Center of Sociological Research (doctoral thesis award).

Correction (June 2025):

The article has been updated with correct dataverse link in the supplementary material section. For more details, please see the correction notice: .

ORCID iD

Fernando De la Cuesta

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

The files can be found at .

Notes

References

Aassve

Daniele

Le Moglie

(2022) Never forget the first time: the persistent effects of corruption and the rise of populism in Italy. Journal of Politics. doi: 10.1086/723019, In press.

Abou-Chadi

Krause

(2018) The causal effect of radical right success on mainstream parties’ policy positions: a regression discontinuity approach. British Journal of Political Science 50: 1–19. DOI: 10.1017/S0007123418000029.

Achen

(2002) Parental socialization and rational party identification. Political Behavior 24: 151–170.

Adams

Clark

Ezrow

, et al. (2006) Are niche parties fundamentally different from mainstream parties? The causes and the electoral consequences of Western European parties’ policy shifts, 1976-1998. American Journal of Political Science 50: 513–529. DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00199.x.

Bechtel

Hangartner

Schmid

(2018) Compulsory voting, habit formation, and political participation. The Review of Economics and Statistics 100: 467–476. URL: DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00701, https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article/100/3/467-476/58470

Bhatti

Hansen

(2012) Leaving the nest and the social act of voting: turnout among first-time voters. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 22: 380–406. DOI: 10.1080/17457289.2012.721375.

Bhatti

Hansen

Wass

(2016) First-time boost beats experience: the effect of past eligibility on turnout. Electoral Studies 41: 151–158. DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2015.12.005.

Brown

(2021) The Obama Effect? Race, First-time Voting, and Future Participation. URL: https://github.com/jakerbrown/files/raw/master/papers/obama_effect.pdf

Coppock

Green

(2016) Is voting habit forming? new evidence from experiments and regression discontinuities. American Journal of Political Science 60: 1044–1062. DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12210.

10.

De Kadt

(2017) Voting then, voting now: The long-term consequences of participation in South Africa’s first democratic election. Journal of Politics 79: 670–687. DOI: 10.1086/690065.

11.

De Vries

Hobolt

(2020) Political Entrepreneurs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctvt9k3d3, https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780691206547/html, DOI: 10.1515/9780691206547.

12.

Dinas

(2014a) Does choice bring loyalty ? Electoral participation and the development of party identification. American Journal of Political Science 58: 449–465. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24363496

13.

Dinas

(2014b) The long shadow of parental political socialization on the development of political orientations. Forum (Germany) 12: 397–416. DOI: 10.1515/for-2014-5013.

14.

Dinas

(2017) The evolving role of partisanship. In: The SAGE Handbook of Electoral Behavior. SAGE Publications, pp. 266–286. chapter Chapter 13.

15.

Dinas

Riera

(2018) Do european parliament elections impact national party system fragmentation? Comparative Political Studies 51: 447–476. DOI: 10.1177/0010414017710259.

16.

Dunaiski

(2021) Is compulsory voting habit-forming? Regression discontinuity evidence from Brazil. Electoral Studies 71: 102334. DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102334.

17.

Festinger

(1968) Theory Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

18.

Ford

Jennings

(2020) The changing cleavage politics of Western Europe. Annual Review of Political Science 23: 295–314. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-polisci-052217-104957.

19.

Franklin

(2004a) The role of generational replacement in turnout change. In: Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 3, pp. 59–90. URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/CBO9780511616884A018/type/book_part, DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511616884.006.

20.

Franklin

(2004b) Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945. First Edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

21.

Franklin

(2004c) Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945. Cambrigde, UK: Cambridge University Press.

22.

Franklin

van Spanje

(2012) How do established voters react to new parties? The case of Italy. Electoral Studies 31: 1985297–2008305. DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2011.11.009.

23.

Gerber

Green

Shachar

(2003) Voting may be habit-forming: Evidence from a randomized field experiment. American Journal of Political Science 47: 540–550. DOI: 10.1111/1540-5907.00038.

24.

Górecki

(2013) Electoral context, habit-formation and voter turnout: A new analysis. Electoral Studies 32, 140–152. DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2012.09.005. URL: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0261379412001291

25.

Green

Shachar

(2000) Habit formation and political behaviour: evidence of consuetude in voter turnout. British Journal of Political Science 30: S0007123400000247. DOI: 10.1017/S0007123400000247. URL: http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0007123400000247

26.

Harmon-Jones

Mills

(2019) An introduction to cognitive dissonance theory and an overview of current perspectives on the theory. In: Cognitive Dissonance, Second Edition: Reexamining a Pivotal Theory in Psychology. Chapter Introducti, pp. 3–21. DOI: 10.1037/10318-001.

27.

Hernández

(2018) Democratic discontent and support for mainstream and challenger parties: Democratic protest voting. European Union Politics 19: 458–480. DOI: 10.1177/1465116518770812. URL: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116518770812

28.

Hernández

Kriesi

(2016) The electoral consequences of the financial and economic crisis in Europe. European Journal of Political Research 55: 203–224. DOI: 10.1111/1475-6765.12122. URL: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/1475-6765.12122

29.

Hobolt

Tilley

(2016) Fleeing the centre: the rise of challenger parties in the aftermath of the euro crisis. West European Politics 39: 971–991. DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2016.1181871.

30.

Holbein

Rangel

(2020) Does voting have upstream and downstream consequences? regression discontinuity tests of the transformative voting hypothesis. The Journal of Politics 82: 1196–1216. DOI: 10.1086/707859.

31.

Jessen

Kuehnle

Wagner

(2021) Is voting really habit-forming and transformative? long-run effects of earlier eligibility on turnout and political involvement from the uk. DIW Berlin Discussion Paper. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3924800. URL: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3924800.

32.

Kriesi

Schulte-Cloos

, 2020. Support for radical parties in Western Europe: Structural conflicts and political dynamics. Electoral Studies 65, 102138. DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2020.102138. URL: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0261379420300238

33.

Lipset

Rokkan

(1967) Party System and Voter Aligments.

34.

Meredith

(2009) Persistence in political participation. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 4: 187–209. DOI: 10.1561/100.00009015.

35.

Mullainathan

Washington

(2009) Sticking with your vote: cognitive dissonance and political attitudes. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1: 86–111. DOI: 10.1257/app.1.1.86.

36.

Orriols

Cordero

(2016) The breakdown of the spanish two-party system: the upsurge of podemos and ciudadanos in the 2015 general election. South European Society and Politics 21: 469–492. DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2016.1198454. URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13608746.2016.1198454

37.

Plutzer

(2002) Becoming a habitual voter: Inertia, resources, and growth in young adulthood. American Political Science Review 96: 41–56. DOI: 10.1017/S0003055402004227.

38.

Schulte-Cloos

(2019) The effect of European Parliament elections on political socialisation. Journal of European Public Policy 26: 1094–1111. DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2019.1620841.

39.

Sekhon

Titiunik

(2012) When natural experiments are neither natural nor experiments. American Political Science Review 106: 35–57. DOI: 10.1017/S0003055411000542.

40.

Shachar

(2003) Party loyalty as habit formation. Journal of Applied Econometrics 18: 251–269. DOI: 10.1002/jae.698 URL: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/jae.698

41.

Titiunik

(2021) Natural Experiments. In: Druckman

Green

(eds) Advances in Experimental Political Science. London, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 103–129. DOI: 10.1017/9781108777919.008, arXiv: 2002.00202.

42.

Van der Brug

Franklin

(2004) Generational Replacement. Engine of Electoral Change. In: Voter Turnout and The Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies Since 1945, pp. 429–457. chapter Chapter 34.

43.

Vidal

(2018) Challenging business as usual? The rise of new parties in Spain in times of crisis. West European Politics 41: 261–286. DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2017.1376272.