Weighting Parties and Coalitions: How Coalition Signals Influence Voting Behavior

Abstract

Democratic accountability is characterized as weak in parliamentary systems where voters cannot choose their government directly. We argue that coalition signals about desirable and undesirable coalitions that might be formed after the election help to provide this essential aspect of democratic government. We propose a simple model that identifies the effect of coalition signals on individual vote decisions. Based on survey experiments in two different countries we show how coalition signals change the relative weight of voters' party and coalition considerations. Coalition signals increase the importance of coalition considerations and, at the same time, decrease the importance of party considerations in voters' decision calculus, leading some voters to change their vote intention.

Strategic Abstention in Proportional Representation Systems (Evidence from Multiple Countries)

“…This result holds controlling for education, political knowledge and political interest. This is consistent with the findings in Tillman (2015) and Gschwend et al (2017), who show that pre-electoral coalitions have a positive effect on turnout. The implication is straightforward: at the margin, ability to pin down the relevant set of coalitions and its probability distribution increases turnout.…”

“…Tillman (2015) uses field data from 19 parliamentary democracies to show that the presence of a pre-electoral coalition increases turnout on average by more than 1.5 percentage points. Gschwend et al (2017) find a similar effect using a survey experiment. Taken together, results in all three papers together suggest that reduction in ambiguity with respect to which coalitions may be formed (and hence with respect to the joint probability distribution of them being formed after the elections) has a positive effect on turnout.…”

Show Me Your Friends: A Survey Experiment on the Effect of Coalition Signals

“…Instead, we specifically focus on the effect of coalition signals sent during election campaigns on perceptions about parties, which should be of greater consequence as voters have yet to cast their ballots. Experimental designs have also been used to study whether and how preelection coalition signals affect voters' strategic or coalitiondirected voting (Goodin, Güth, and Sausgruber 2008;Gschwend, Meffert, and Stoetzer 2017;Meffert and Gschwend 2011), but the question remains as to which mechanisms are activated by coalition signals that can influence voting, in particular, the one we propose here: the effect on parties' perceived positions. Our design allows testing for these mediated effects on vote choice.…”

Pre-Electoral Coalitions: Insights into the Creation of Political Parties

“…A factor that might encourage two parties to form an alliance is a 5 See also Gschwend and Hooghe (2008) and Eichorst (2014) for examples of studies arguing that PECs provide cues to the voters with regards to the future government composition. Moreover, Gschwend, Meffert, and Stoetzer (2017) use a survey experiment to show that providing voters with coalition signals increases the importance of coalition considerations and decreases the importance of party considerations in voters' decision-making.…”