Voters often choose parties that share similar positions to them on certain issues. Andreas Goldberg and Jonas Lefevere argue that this behaviour is more prevalent among voters with more extreme issue positions. So, better understanding the role of policy issues in electoral competition requires considering voters’ positional extremity
Explaining party choice is one of the core goals of electoral research. One of the most prominent theories is the proximity model of voting, which suggests that voters are more likely to vote for a particular party the closer their position on a policy issue is to that of the party. Research suggests that contextual and individual characteristics influence the strength of such proximity voting.
At the contextual level, polarised party systems appears to enhance issue voting. In these contexts, parties are easier to differentiate from one another, which helps voters to identify the party that best represents their interests. Similarly, individual characteristics also enhance proximity voting, because better educated and politically more interested voters are more likely to engage in issue voting.
We argue that it is not just the extremity of party positions (party polarisation) that matters, but also the extremity of voters’ positions. Voters who themselves are more extreme on a given issue are more likely to vote for a party that represents this more extreme position.
The argument that positional extremity increases proximity voting is not new. Previous research has pointed mainly to intensity as the key factor; that is, more extreme positions corresponded with more intense issue preferences. Consequently, these more intense preferences played a stronger role in the electoral decision-making process than more moderate positions. Indeed, the intensity or salience of issue positions likely plays a role, but cannot fully explain the influence of positional extremity.
The intensity or salience of issue positions likely increases the likelihood of proximity voting, but cannot fully explain the influence of positional extremity
Two more recent arguments may explain why voters with more extreme issue positions tend to engage more strongly in proximity voting.
First, party choice differs between more moderate and more extreme voters. Notwithstanding the regular emergence of new parties across countries, including programmatic parties that often have a specific and sometimes more extreme position on a given issue, there is still a greater choice of parties near the centre of the political spectrum. This means that voters with extreme issue positions usually face a limited choice set because the density of close parties is lower. However, their (limited) party choices tend to offer more distinctive issue positions, which makes it easier to know which party is closest to their own preferences.
Second, different levels of knowledge about parties’ issue positions may be important. In a forthcoming PhD dissertation, Isaïa Jennart shows that voters at the extremes have greater knowledge of issue positions than more moderate voters (see also this study by Yves Dejaeghere and Patrick van Erkel). Some moderate voters tend to be politically apathetic, at least on some issues. This means that moderate voters are less likely to engage in proximity voting because they lack the knowledge to identify the political party closest to their ideal position.
The two logics discussed may, however, depend on party issue polarisation. If party choice is more clustered and dense around the centre, all voters may struggle to differentiate between the various party positions and to identify the party closest to their individual position. While voters at the extremes may have an outspoken issue position, this may not matter much for electoral decision making if the party offer on the issue is not differentiated.
In political systems with polarised party positions, differences in issue position knowledge between extreme and moderate voters may come to the fore
In contrast, in a political system with polarised party positions, the aforementioned differences in party choice sets and issue position knowledge between extreme and moderate voters may come to the fore.
Previous research has often examined overarching issue dimensions, such as the left-right dimension. However, voters’ issue positions and issue salience vary significantly across issues, as does party polarisation.
To account for these cross-issue differences, such as a voter holding an extreme position on one issue but a moderate position on another, we collected empirical evidence that accounts for the concurrent impact of multiple issues on the vote. Specifically, we considered survey data from 7,323 voters in the context of the 2019 European Parliament elections in ten countries on four issues: economic redistribution, European integration, immigration, and social welfare.
Our analysis confirms the relevance of positional extremity for proximity voting. As expected, voters with extreme issue positions were more likely than moderate voters to cast votes for parties with proximate issue positions. Importantly, we find this effect of voters’ extremity while accounting for voters’ issue salience.
The effect of extremity is not just an effect of the intensity or salience of extreme issue positions, but a result of the differences in choice sets and issue position knowledge
This suggests that the effect of extremity is not just an effect of the intensity or salience of one’s (extreme) issue position, but is likely due to the differences in choice sets and issue position knowledge discussed above. In contrast, our results did not show that the effect of positional extremity depends on the degree of party polarisation.
In recent years, much attention has been paid to the supply side of politics, especially to the increasing polarisation of parties. Polarisation is often discussed in somewhat negative terms, but research has shown that it may in fact enhance voters’ ability to differentiate the party offer, and cast votes for parties with similar policy stances to their own. However, the demand side, in terms of voters’ issue position extremity, may be equally relevant to party success.
What is more, party polarisation and the distribution of voter positions may be mutually responsive. Parties may strategically polarise issues on which they perceive public preferences to be polarised. In sum, to better understand and potentially exploit the role of issues, it is important to consider both the contextual and individual aspects of issue competition.
