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Black and white photo of Annika Fredén. Photo.

Annika Fredén

Associate Senior Lecturer

Black and white photo of Annika Fredén. Photo.

Insurance Voting in the Centre: An Experimental Approach

Author

  • Annika Fredén
  • Bastiaan Bruinsma
  • Nora Theorin
  • Henrik Oscarsson

Summary, in English

Recent research suggests that to help their preferred coalition win an election, voters are willing to vote for a political party other than their preferred choice. In this field, voting for smaller parties under proportional representation is an under-studied feature. A crucial factor to estimate the chances for smaller parties is polls. In this study, we analyze the influence of opinion polls on switching vote choice to a smaller party when the party polls are at different levels. Building on an original survey experiment, we elaborate the potential differences in impact on insurance voting for a small party with looser or stronger association with a government alternative. The focus is the 2022 Swedish general election and the three smallest parties in parliament: the Green Party (center-left), the Christian Democrats (right), and the Liberals (center-right). The experiment had nine different conditions where each of these parties was placed at different levels of opinion: below, at, and above the parliamentary threshold, while holding all other factors constant. We find that poll-induced insurance voting is most prevalent for the party with the strongest preference for a government alternative (the Christian Democrats) and least prevalent for the party with a more issue-focused stance (the Greens).

Department/s

  • Department of Political Science
  • LU Profile Area: Natural and Artificial Cognition

Publishing year

2024-08-09

Language

English

Publication/Series

International Journal of Public Opinion Research

Volume

36

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Topic

  • Political Science

Keywords

  • opinionsmätningar, spärr, koalitioner, röstning

Status

Published

Project

  • Bias and methods of AI technology studying political behavior

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1471-6909