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Ticket‐splitting and strategic voting under mixed electoral rules: Evidence from Germany
Author(s) -
GSCHWEND THOMAS
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2006.00641.x
Subject(s) - voting , contingent vote , incentive , consolidation (business) , bullet voting , cardinal voting systems , disapproval voting , spoilt vote , microeconomics , group voting ticket , economics , ranked voting system , business , public economics , political science , law , finance , politics
. There is more to strategic voting than simply avoiding wasting one's vote if one is liberated from the corset of studying voting behavior in plurality systems. Mixed electoral systems provide different voters with diverse incentives to cast a strategic vote. They not only determine the degree of strategic voting, but also the kind of strategies voters employ. Strategic voters employ either a wasted‐vote or a coalition insurance strategy , but do not automatically cast their vote for large parties as the current literature suggest. This has important implications for the consolidation of party systems. Moreover, even when facing the same institutional incentives, voters vary in their proclivity to vote strategically.