Everything to Everyone: The Electoral Consequences of the Broad‐Appeal Strategy in Europe

Abstract

Parties often tailor their campaign message differently to different groups of voters with the goal of appealing to a broader electorate with diverse preferences and thereby winning their votes. I argue that the strategy helps a party win votes if it can convince diverse groups of voters that the party is ideologically closer to their preferred positions. Using election data from nine Western European democracies, I first show that parties gain votes when they appeal broadly. Analysis of individual-level survey data suggests that voters perceive broadly appealing parties as ideologically closer to their own positions, a finding that identifies a plausible mechanism behind the aggregate positive effect of this strategy on party election performance. These findings not only help explain the behavior of some European parties, but they may also offer a potential recipe for electoral success in multiparty democracies. P olitical pundits, commentators, and scholars alike expect clarity and consistency from political parties, especially in multiparty systems. While Downs (1957, 136) argues that parties in a two-party system should disguise their positions "in a fog of ambiguity" to increase the size of their constituency, he argues that parties in multiparty systems should distinguish themselves ideologically from each other and take clear and differentiated positions to win (126-27).Taking clear, consistent, and differentiated positions also has important implications for many normative conceptions of representation and is often thought to be critical for the effective functioning of a representative democracy (Berelson 1952;Dahlberg 2009). When parties do not clearly articulate their positions, or appear consistent and to the point, voters arguably have a much harder task when attempting to identify the party that would best represent their interests in office. The failure to take clear and consistent positions during campaigns Zeynep Somer-Topcu is Assistant Professor,

Strategic Ambiguity of Party Positions in Multi-Party Competition

“…In addition, we employ a recently proposed amendment that takes the share of the manifesto devoted to left-right issues as indicator for niche status (see Somer-Topcu 2015).…”

“…We acknowledge that our measure has limitations as well. First, we cannot capture ambiguity in policy positions if a party decides to remain silent on the topic instead of issuing a position (for a discussion of various ambiguity strategies, see Milita, Ryan and Simas 2014;Somer-Topcu 2015). Although this might pose a serious problem if one were interested in a single issue, it is less relevant here as we measure positions and ambiguity at the aggregate level of a left-right ideological scale.…”

“…If targeted messages toward specific groups and therefore ambiguous positions can attract votes from different groups, parties have incentives to present ambiguous rather than clear-cut policy platforms. In fact, there is an evolving empirical literature suggesting that ambiguous policy platforms can help parties win votes (Rovny 2012;Somer-Topcu 2015).…”

Party convergence and vote switching: Explaining mainstream party decline across Europe

“…When electoral competition is high, for example, Abou‐Chadi and Orlowski () find that large mainstream parties will moderate their positions. Rovny (), moreover, has argued that parties may choose to blur issues they wish to de‐emphasise and Somer‐Topcu () has demonstrated that parties in multiparty systems that use a ‘broad appeal strategy’ do better electorally.…”

Position, selective emphasis and framing

“…In such a situation, parties may talk about issues associated with the secondary dimension, not to signal a clear position on these issues, but to deliberately blur their position on the secondary dimension. Blurring can be done in different ways, as according to Rovny it means adopting ''vague, contradictory or ambiguous positions'' instead of a clear ideological stance, with the aim of masking a party's ''spatial distance from voters in order to either attract broader support, or at least not deter voters on these issues'' (Rovny, 2013: 5-6; see also Somer-Topcu, 2014, andTomz andVan Houweling, 2009). A blurring strategy is outlined in Figure 2.…”