Protest Vote

The outcomes of recent parliamentary elections in Germany (2009) and The Netherlands (2010) have provided clear evidence for significant changes in both party systems. The increasing party system fragmentation and voter volatility in these contexts have been associated with the rise of populist challengers which have achieved remarkable success at these elections. This paper aims at analysing the backgrounds of this sudden electoral success by revisiting the protest vote hypothesis, which offers plausible explanations for populist party choice in various Western democracies but at the same time challenged by the issue and ideological voting hypothesis. I suggest that one could systematically merge the two concepts to differentiate between instrumental and expressive types of protest vote, which lead to a better understanding of populist party vote and its consequences for electoral volatility. The findings of the preliminary analysis of this new protest vote model suggests that instrumental protest vote is more general in The Netherlands, where there is a variety of populist alternatives in the party system. On the contrary, expressive protest vote has been found to be the primary protest vote type in Germany where the populist left party is not challenged by any other populist contesters.

or the most part, the decision to cast a ballot for third parties N~ under simple plurality electoral systems has been downplayed in the voting studies literature. Yet it is in the decision to vote for a third party under single member &dquo;winner-take-all&dquo; electoral systems that we see the interaction between the individual-level attitudes which determine vote choice and the incentive structure provided by the electoral system. In the wake of Duverger's Law, &dquo;third&dquo; parties have been, and are, regarded as a fairly peripheral set of actors, their long-term survival made doubtful by the voters' wishes to avoid wasting a vote. One important empirical objection to Duverger's Law, however, is that, except for the case of the United States, in those countries which use this system meaningful third parties persist (Duverger 1954; Riker 1982). Parties will, of course, attract a certain number of voters regardless of their electoral situation. Every party possesses loyal voters who stay with their party through periods of boom and bust. By the same token, there are voters who will never vote for a third party under any circumstances. Between these two extremes, however, lie two sets of voters who will vote for minor or &dquo;third&dquo; parties subject to the state of party competition. These two types of citizens are &dquo;strategic&dquo; and &dquo;protest&dquo; voters, who may cast their ballots for a third party, often without regard to that party's overall platform and agenda. The presence of such voters in part depends on the capacity of &dquo;winner-take-all&dquo; electoral systems to provide perverse incentives for

Although ideological congruence is a central component of empirical and normative theory of representation, little is known about congruence between ideologically extreme parties (IEPs) and their supporters or the broader electorate. Moreover, we know even less about whether levels of congruence vary from one extreme to the other, and across dimensions of political contestation. Our article integrates both left and right poles in the analysis of ideological extremism and inquires about IEPs’ policy congruence with their supporters and the broader electorate. For this purpose, we analyze policy congruence along three ideological dimensions: socioeconomic, sociocultural and pro/anti-European integration. Based on our findings, IEPs are not highly congruent with the broader electorate. These parties are congruent with their supporters – and this holds especially for those situated on the right-wing pole of the political spectrum. Importantly, IEPs’ congruence scores vary across issue dimensions. Our findings have implications for understanding the function of IEPs in modern democracies and the broader debates on representation and policy congruence.

The paper addresses the question if populism and different forms of protest voting in Europe and the US are interrelated, and if so, how exactly. Populism and protest voting are contemplated from both supply and demand sides. The supply side consists of parties/candidates and their programs/promises whereas the demand side deals with public sentiments and grievances. The central cases considered in the essay are the 2016 EU membership referendum in the UK and the presidential elections in the US the same year. The article also addresses the question whether there’s a protest voting culture in the making and how, if at all, it is connected to the process of “normalization” of voting for the parties/candidates holding particular radical views which used to be considered too extreme and generally unacceptable by the society. The point made in the paper is that the quality of the democratic process has to do, among other things, with the ability of a given country’s electoral system and the range of candidates available to provide the general electorate with voting options precisely corresponding to their actual political views.

Elections  send  ambiguous  signals  to  the  political  system,  particularly  when  interpreting  the  meaning  of  various  “nonvotes” (e.g., abstention, ballot spoiling, and roll-off). While a “none of the above” (NOTA) option may allow voters to  better  signal  discontent,  how  NOTA  voting  is  used  is  not  well  understood.  The  authors’  analysis  of  all  races  in  Nevada, which has allowed for NOTA voting since 1976, suggests that NOTA voting is consistent with protest voting and limited information. Thus, while NOTA voting can be a less ambiguous signal of discontent than other nonvotes, the practice of NOTA voting is less clear