Do voters learn? Evidence that voters respond accurately to changes in political parties’ policy positions

Abstract

A premise of the mass-elite linkage at the heart of representative democracy is that voters notice changes in political parties' policy positions and update their party perceptions accordingly. However, recent studies question the ability of voters to accurately perceive changes in parties' positions. We advance this literature with a two-wave panel survey design which measured voters' perception of party positions before and after a major policy shift by parties in the government coalition in Denmark 2011-2013. We report two key findings that extend previous work: First, in our case voters do indeed pay attention to parties when they visibly change policy position. Second, voters update their perceptions of the party positions much more accurately than would have been expected if they merely relied on a 'coalition heuristic' as a rule-of-thumb. Our findings imply that voters under some conditions are better able to make meaningful political choices than previous work suggests.

Do Voters Follow? The Effect of Party Cues on Public Opinion During a Process of Policy Change

“…To further understand how party cues shape public opinion in a real‐world setting, this study has examined a policy proposal to criminalize street begging that was high on the political agenda in the Norwegian public debate in 2014 and 2015. The results indicate that although parties play a role in shaping citizens’ opinions, they face considerable constraints, speaking to a more moderate role for party cues in explaining citizen opinion change when compared to the findings in much of the previous literature (e.g., Zaller 1992; Chong & Druckman 2007; Seeberg et al 2017). Testing two different hypotheses on party cue effects, I first find modest evidence for H1 stating that party cues are more influential among salient policy issues, adhering to the argument set out by Togeby (2004).…”

“…A more recent branch of studies utilizes an innovative analytical strategy studying voter reactions to party policy changes as they unfold in the real world based on observational data pre and post change. These quasi‐experimental studies conclude that citizens do comprehend policy shifts as they occur (Plescia & Staniek 2017; Seeberg et al 2017) and that the policy shifts guide opinions (Bisgaard & Slothuus 2018; Satherley et al 2018).…”

Do Voters Polarize When Radical Parties Enter Parliament?

“…Some observers also claim that radical‐right parties, for example, have had little effect on voters' long‐term attitudes (Mudde ). In contrast, other work shows that voters do react to elite positioning (Adams, Green, and Milazzo ; Fernàndez‐Vàzquez ; Seeberg, Slothuus, and Stubager ). Our findings highlight that newsworthy, legitimizing events such as elections have a focusing impact, perhaps leading voters to update their views more than after other, more subtle shifts.…”

Shifting parties, rational switchers: Are voters responding to ideological shifts by political parties?

“…Second, evidence accumulates showing that citizens perceive change when parties shift policy positions (Adams et al, 2011, 2014). Even though voters do not seem to respond to changes in manifestos or to shifts communicated through campaign communication (Adams et al, 2011; Busch, 2016; but see Seeberg et al (2017) for evidence that voters perceive important policy shifts), voters are responding to perceptions of change – as for example observed by experts (Adams et al, 2014). Such party position changes seem to be more easily perceived when they are preceded by a change in the party leadership (Fernandez-Vazquez and Somer-Topcu, 2017).…”