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First published online April 29, 2019

What do voters do when they prefer a leader from another party?

Abstract

There is little research on voters who display incongruent preferences, that is, those who prefer a leader from another party than their preferred one. We address two questions. How many voters prefer a leader from another party? Do these incongruent voters vote for their preferred party or leader? We use the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) data sets covering 83 legislative elections over a time period of 20 years (1996–2016). We find that 17% of the electorate typically prefer a leader from another party. In that group, the vast majority (80%) end up supporting their preferred party while 20% of voters support their preferred leader. We find that partisans and those located at the extremes of the political spectrum tend to have more congruent preferences. Moreover, the proportion of incongruent voters who cast their vote for their preferred leader is higher in less established and less polarized countries as well as among non-partisans. We discuss the implications of our findings for our understanding of the role of parties and leaders in contemporary democracies.

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Biographies

Jean-François Daoust is a post-doctoral fellow in the department of political science at McGill University. His research interests include political behaviour, comparative politics, public opinion and research methods.
André Blais is Professor in the department of political science at the University of Montreal where he holds a Research Chair in Electoral Studies. His research interests include the study of elections and voting behaviour, turnout, electoral systems, and strategic voting.
Gabrielle Péloquin-Skulski is an undergraduate student in political science at the University of Montréal. She is interested in political behaviour and elections.

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Published In

Article first published online: April 29, 2019
Issue published: March 2021

Keywords

  1. Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES)
  2. leaders
  3. political parties
  4. vote choice

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© The Author(s) 2019.
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André Blais
University of Montreal, Canada
Gabrielle Péloquin-Skulski
University of Montreal, Canada

Notes

Jean-François Daoust, Department of Political Science, McGill University, 3610 McTavish Street, Montréal H3A 1X9, Québec, Canada. Email: [email protected]

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