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This article investigates the effects of the deep transformations in the relationship between West European class‐mass parties and their electorates. Particular attention is paid to the changing nature of individuals' partisan attachments, which are hypothesized to be less rooted in social and ideological identities and more in individual attitudes towards increasingly visible partisan objects. The main objective of this article is to examine the influence of voters' attitudes towards one of these "objects"—the party leaders—in determining psychological attachments with the parties. The analysis concentrates on the two main cleavage‐based parties in Britain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The empirical findings highlight the declining ability of social identities (class and religious) to predict individual feelings of partisan attachment, as well as the growing influence of voters' attitudes towards party leaders. The concluding section points to the crucial role that political psychology can play in our understanding of democratic elections' outcomes.

Social-psychological models of voting behaviour systematically downsize the relevance of party leader evaluations by conceiving them as mere consequences of causally prior partisan attachments. However, the validity of this interpretation depends heavily on the effectively exogenous status of party identification. Empirical research shows that the assumed exogeneity of partisanship is, at best, doubtful. In such a context, single-equation models of voting are likely to provide seriously biased estimates. By employing the proper econometric procedures (instrumental variable estimation) and the most appropriate data sources to address causality issues (panel data) this study provides strong support in favour of the personalisation hypothesis.

The classic heuristics of voting behaviour have been eroded overtime especially in well-established democracies. Ideology, party identification, and social class have been gradually replaced by short-period factors. In particular, the personalization has represented an innovative variable that significantly contributes to explain voting behaviour. Cross-pressures between party identification, candidate assessments and issue preferences paved the way to the diffusion of protest voting, both against the élite and the system. In this respect, Italy represents a very interesting case from both a theoretical and an empirical point view considering the presence of protest parties and the important diffusion of anti-system movements which surfed the protest to consolidate their positions. The editors conceived this special issue aiming at analysing and measuring the impact of protest/negative voting in Italy between 2016 and 2020, a period in which protest parties and voters' discontent have significantly increased. Data presented by the different papers confirm, albeit under different perspectives, the relevance of this peculiar form of political behaviour.

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are online tools that assist citizens with their voting decisions. They are offered to voters before elections in many countries and have experienced remarkable success. Recently flourishing research on VAAs addresses this phenomenon and provides explanations for the dissemination and popularity of these tools. Moreover, VAAs have been analyzed regarding their effects on political parties, candidates, and on voters in regard to their electoral behavior. Research shows that using a VAA indeed makes a difference, while the effect depends strongly on the way a VAA is designed and by whom it is used. The abundance of data generated by VAAs bears potential for comparative studies of public opinion and party systems over time and across countries, and thereby bridges research on VAAs to general questions of political science research.

"Voting Advice Applications" published on by Oxford University Press.