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Coalition governments are the norm in parliamentary democracies. Yet, despite the predominance of this type of government, political scientists have only recently started to investigate how voters approach elections when a coalition government is the likely outcome. Such elections present additional uncertainty and complexity for voters compared with elections in plurality systems, where party choice translates more directly into a choice of government. These factors have lead to the assumption that strategic voting is unlikely to occur in systems that produce coalition governments. In this introductory article to the special issue on Voters and Coalition Governments, we consider whether voters have the capacity to anticipate specific coalition outcomes and propose a framework for understanding the conditions that lead to strategic voting in both plurality and proportional systems. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

Explanations of party competition and vote choice are commonly based on the Downsian view of politics: parties maximise votes by adopting positions on policy dimensions. However, recent research suggests that British voters choose parties based on evaluations of competence rather than on ideological position. This paper proposes a theoretical account which combines elements of the spatial model with the 'issue ownership' approach. Whereas the issue ownership theory has focused mainly on party competition, this paper examines the validity of the model from the perspective of both parties and voters, by testing its application to recent British general elections. Our findings suggest that as parties have converged ideologically, competence considerations have become more important than ideological position in British elections. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Explanations of party competition and vote choice are commonly based on the Downsian view of politics: parties maximise votes by adopting positions on policy dimensions. However, recent research suggests that British voters choose parties based on evaluations of competence rather than on ideological position. This paper proposes a theoretical account which combines elements of the spatial model with the 'issue ownership' approach. Whereas the issue ownership theory has focused mainly on party competition, this paper examines the validity of the model from the perspective of both parties and voters, by testing its application to recent British general elections. Our findings suggest that as parties have converged ideologically, competence considerations have become more important than ideological position in British elections. [Copyright 2008 Elsevier Ltd.]

AbstractPolitical choice is central to citizens' participation in elections. Nonetheless, little is known about the individual‐level mechanisms that link political choice and turnout. It is argued in this article that turnout decisions are shaped not only by the differences between the parties (party polarisation), but also by the closeness of parties to citizens' own ideological position (congruence), and that congruence matters more in polarised systems where more is at stake. Analysing cross‐national survey data from 80 elections, it is found that both polarisation and congruence have a mobilising effect, but that polarisation moderates the effect of congruence on turnout. To further explore the causal effect of political choice, the arrival of a new radical right‐wing party in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), is leveraged and the findings show that the presence of the AfD had a mobilising effect, especially for citizens with congruent views.