Do citizens vote for parties, policies or the expected winner in proportional representation systems? Evidence from four different countries using a multiple-type model

Abstract

This article presents a unified framework that allows us to disentangle to what extent agents in proportional representation (PR) systems engage in the different strategies that the available voting models have separately suggested: ‘party’, ‘coalitional’, ‘bandwagon’ and ‘other’ voting (i.e. neither of the previous three). Results using data from multiple countries reveal that at least 75% of agents cast a sincere party vote. Around 10% of voters try to affect policymaking by casting a coalitional vote. Since most coalitional agents use their vote to ‘push’ coalitions away from the centre, extreme parties are the most benefited. Hence, strategic coalitional voting may increase rather than preclude fragmentation of a party system in PR contexts. Another 5% of voters support the expected winner regardless of their own party and coalition preferences. Finally, 5–10% of voters fall into the category of other types. The characteristics and motivations of each type are uncovered. Political sophistication increases the likelihood of sincere and coalitional voting. On the other hand, dissatisfaction with parties voted for in the past increases other voting. In particular, recent growth of European right-wing nationalist parties is shown to rely more on other voting and less on sincere and coalitional support.

Māori in New Zealand: Voting with Their Feet?

“…Strategic behavior seems to be modest. This is in line with previous findings that suggest that strategic behavior is not predominant among voters (Abramson et al, 2010;Alvarez et al, 2006;Blais et al, 2016;Hix et al, 2017;Riambau, 2016). 4 This could be explained by a variety of factors.…”

Think Twice before Jumping on the Bandwagon: Clarifying Concepts in Research on the Bandwagon Effect

“…This distinguishes the bandwagon effect from strategic voting because the latter is initially motivated by the relative unpopularity of the initial preference – voters try to avoid ‘wasting’ their vote (Alvarez et al, 2006). If preferences align with popularity, then this vote-wasting logic need not lead to strategic voting – although some argue that strategic and sincere votes can be aligned (Riambau, 2016). If they do not align, then voters might use the information available to them to attempt to affect the election in a favourable way, and this can mean voting for a more popular party or candidate.…”

“…It could be argued, of course, that distinguishing between strategic voting and the bandwagon effect is unnecessary. As intimated above, a simple reason this distinction is necessary is that strategic voting does not necessarily benefit more popular candidates or parties, especially in proportional representation systems where strategic voters might flock towards smaller parties who are likely to be included in a victorious coalition (Riambau, 2015, 2016), whereas bandwagoning does necessarily benefit more popular options. Equally, smaller parties might benefit from strategic voting in first-past-the-post single member district systems, because a given candidate has a good chance of winning a seat.…”

“…Equally, smaller parties might benefit from strategic voting in first-past-the-post single member district systems, because a given candidate has a good chance of winning a seat. Another, more prosaic reason is that the literature itself appears to be moving towards distinguishing between these processes (Blais et al, 2006; Evrenk and Sher, 2015; Meffert and Gschwend, 2011; Riambau, 2015, 2016).…”

“…Note that a larger proportion of proportional representation studies consider the dynamic bandwagon effect than any other context, but that this number is still small in absolute and relative terms (three of eight). This is largely because Meffert et al (2011) and Riambau’s (2015, 2016) work around the problem of ‘winning’ under proportional representation by defining the bandwagon effect as ‘voting for a party that is predicted to be almost surely in government’ (Riambau, 2016: 3) – an alternative, but static, approach. It is nonetheless telling that so small a proportion of every other context has looked at bandwagon effects in dynamic terms.…”