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Direct democracy allows citizens to undercut the will of their elected representatives. Yet, while the electorate has the final say in referendums, political parties are in a privileged position to influence voters' perceptions of the issue on the ballot. By developing a model on voting behaviour in referendums, this article examines how and to what extent parties can influence referendum outcomes. It argues that as pivotal information providers in referendum campaigns, political parties can influence the framing of and uncertainty associated with the ballot proposal and thus, in turn, affect voting behaviour. These propositions are evaluated empirically in a 'controlled comparison' of the two Danish referendums on the Maastricht Treaty, as these cases allow us to examine how changes in party strategies affect changes in referendum outcomes.

There are numerous studies of the effects of partisan cues in established party systems, but almost none on how they affect voting in new party systems. This lacuna might stem from untested assumptions that partisan cues are un-influential where parties lack multigenerational psychological bonds with citizens and long-standing records. Alternatively, we theorize that even in new party systems, voters use partisan cues to assess candidates' capabilities, preferences, and electoral viability. We test this theory through an experiment in which we varied inclusion of party identifiers on mock ballots in Uganda, where the multiparty system was only 5 years old. We find that partisan cues increased selection of major-party candidates over independents, casting of straight-ticket ballots, and votes for copartisans. Our results challenge the common assumption that partisan labels are irrelevant in new party systems. Partisan cues can influence political decision making, even when party systems are young.

AbstractIn many European democracies, political punditry has highlighted the attempts of political parties on the left to court the 'lavender vote' of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals. This article examines the presence of a gay vote in Western Europe with a focus on assessing the role of sexuality in shaping individuals' political preferences and voting behaviour. Empirically, the effect of sexuality on both ideological identification as well as party vote choice is analysed. Using a cumulative dataset of eight rounds of the European Social Survey between 2002 and 2017, this article demonstrates that partnered lesbians and gay men are more likely than comparable heterosexuals to identify with the left, support leftist policy objectives and vote for left‐of‐centre political parties. The analysis represents the first empirical cross‐national European study of the voting behaviour of homosexual individuals and sheds new light on the importance of sexuality as a predictor of political ideology and voting behaviour within the Western European context.