Coalition signals as cues for party and coalition preferences

Abstract

"Coalition signals can offer crucial information to voters during political campaigns. In
multiparty systems, they reduce the number of theoretically possible coalitions to a
much smaller set of plausible and likely coalitions. Strategic voters who care more
about the formation of the next coalition government than supporting the preferred
party might, for example, defect from the preferred party in favor of another party that
might produce a more desirable coalition government. For other voters, coalition
signals might merely elicit affective responses which can shift the vote. In this study,
we investigate whether and how different coalition signals affect vote intentions and
activate different party and coalition preferences. We report the results of a nationally
representative survey experiment conducted before the 2006 Austrian General
Election. Respondents encountered four vignettes with hypothetical coalitions, each
followed by the standard vote intention question. The results indicate that voters are
responsive to coalition signals, and especially voters with two preferred parties tend to
change their vote intentions. Finally, a more detailed look at Green Party voters
suggests that individual party and coalition preferences help to explain the direction of
these changes." (authors abstract)