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Retrospective Voting and Electoral Volatility: A Nordic Perspective
Author(s) -
Söderlund Peter
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
scandinavian political studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.65
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9477
pISSN - 0080-6757
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9477.2008.00203.x
Subject(s) - voting , politics , general election , political science , ranked voting system , multinomial logistic regression , turnout , survey data collection , competence (human resources) , split ticket voting , voting behavior , political economy , demographic economics , positive economics , economics , social psychology , psychology , law , computer science , statistics , mathematics , machine learning
This article examines why people vote for the same party, switch parties or move from voting to non‐voting at consecutive elections. By using post‐election survey data from Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden in the beginning of the 2000s, the main aim is to model the impact of retrospective evaluations of party performance while controlling for theoretically relevant variables. The results of the multinomial regression analyses confirm that dissatisfaction with the performance of a party correlates strongly with party defection, and that the relationship is not weakened with the inclusion of variables for general dissatisfaction with the political system and its actors, standard background factors and political variables. This suggests that many voters are concerned with valence issues and value the overall competence of politicians and parties when they are making a decision whom to vote for.