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Raymond Duch | |
| Professorial Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford. |
Abstract
Ideology is widely considered to be an important factor in shaping policy outcomes and in influencing election outcomes. This essay confirms the importance of ideology in explaining vote choice, based on 245 voter preference surveys world wide, from 30 countries, and over a 25 year period. We also demonstrate, though, that the importance of ideology in the vote function varies quite significantly across countries and, within countries, over time. We propose a theory of the strategic ideological vote to explain this variation. The argument suggests voters anticipate the post-election bargains negotiated amongst members of the governing coalition and these anticipated policy agreements inform their vote choice. Our analysis confirms that voters exercise a strategic ideological vote and that it frequently differs from what would be predicted using sincere ideological voting models.
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Follow this link for Strategic and Sincere Left-Right Placements of Political Parties for 245 Voter Preference Studies