Jonathan Polk
Professor
Multidimensional Incongruence and Vote Switching in Europe
Author
Summary, in English
Does ideological incongruence hurt parties in elections? Research on the representational relationship between parties and voters suggests that ideological congruence can boost a party’s electoral prospects. However, while the mechanism is at the individual-level, most of the literature focuses on the party-level. In this article, we develop a set of hypotheses based on a multi-issue conception of party-voter congruence at the individual-level, and examine the electoral consequences of these varying congruence levels in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Consistent with our expectations, comparative analysis finds that ideological and issue-specific incongruence is a significant factor in voting behavior in the European Parliament elections. Although the substantive effects of incongruence are understandably small compared to partisanship, government, or EU performance evaluations, party-voter disagreement consistently matters, and voters’ issue salience is an important moderator of the impact of incongruence on vote choice.
Publishing year
2018
Language
English
Pages
267-296
Publication/Series
Public Choice
Volume
176
Issue
1-2
Full text
- Available as PDF - 663 kB
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Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Springer
Topic
- Political Science
Keywords
- Parties
- Elections
- Incongruence
- European Union
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0048-5829