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The share of swing voters in Danish general elections has increased substantially over the past decades. Today, more than one-third of Danish voters switch party between national elections. Most literature peg swing voters as less politically engaged and competent. However, swing voters are not a homogeneous group. Analysis of panel survey data from 2001-2005 reveals significant differences between occasional and consistent swing voters. Whereas voters who switch party time after time indeed tend to be less engaged and knowledgeable about politics, this does not apply to voters who switch only occasionally.

The share of swing voters in Danish general elections has increased substantially over the past decades. Today, more than one-third of Danish voters switch party between national elections. Most literature peg swing voters as less politically engaged and competent. However, swing voters are not a homogeneous group. Analysis of panel survey data from 2001-2005 reveals significant differences between occasional and consistent swing voters. Whereas voters who switch party time after time indeed tend to be less engaged and knowledgeable about politics, this does not apply to voters who switch only occasionally.

We analyze contributor behavior when there are two types of voters: positioned voters, who care about the ideological positions of candidates, and swing voters, who care about only the leadership abilities of candidates. Campaign expenditures, which are funded by contributions, are assumed to influence voters' perceptions of a candidate's ability. We find that the number of swing voters may have unexpected consequences on equilibrium campaign contributions. In particular, total contributions may increase as the number of swing voters decreases.Elections are won by doing two things: mobilizing your base and winning the independent swing voters.(Karl Rove, campaign strategist for George W. Bush)

This article describes and analyses voter alignments in the new democracy of Ghana in two recent elections, 1996 and 2000. These elections are a part of the Fourth Republic that began with a 'founding' election in 1992, ushering Ghana into Africa's new wave of democratisation. First the size of the core voting population is established to be about 82% of the voting population, refuting the assumption that voting volatility in new and transitional democracies is always extremely high. A second conclusion is that core and swing voters cannot be distinguished by structural factors, whereas thirdly, the factors behind the party alignment of core voters are similar to Western patterns; primarily level of education, the rural-urban divide, income, and occupation. Finally, swing voters seem to be characterised by a conscious evaluation of government and candidate performance in a sign of relatively 'mature' democratic voting behaviour.

Using actual voting records of simultaneous elections held for Indian federal and regional assemblies -- where same political parties contest against each other in both type of elections -- we identify swing voters. We find that the representatives supported by swing voters outperform significantly with respect to both constituency level outcomes as well as measures based on individual effort. Having controlled for the impact of observable factors, we follow Imbens (2003); Harada (2012) and conduct generalized sensitivity analysis in order to rule out the influence of unobservable factors. We show that the swing voters strengthen the positive association between democracy and growth.

Using actual voting records of simultaneous elections held for federal and regional assemblies - where same political parties contest against each other in both type of elections - we identify the swing voters in an electoral constituency. We compare the Parliamentary performance of elected representatives who enjoy high level of support among swing voters and those who enjoy low level of support among such voters. We measure performance of an elected representative based on her level of activity in Parliament. Specifically, we use attendance, number of questions asked, number of debates participated in and number of private member bills introduced as metrics for measuring performance. We find that representatives who enjoy high level of support among swing voters outperform others significantly in terms of all four parameters that we examine. The above differences are not explained by differences in observable candidate characteristics. We also find that reelection chances are more sensitive to performance in high swing constituencies. The above findings show that the presence of swing voters enhances the effectiveness of democratic institutions by significantly increasing activity level of such institutions.