Coalition-Directed Voting in Multi-Party Democracies

Abstract

Ideology is widely considered to be an important factor in shaping policy outcomes and in influencing election outcomes. We propose a theory of the coalition-directed vote. The argument suggests that voters anticipate the post-election bargains negotiated among potential members of the governing coalition and that these anticipated policy agreements inform their vote choice. Our analysis, based on 86 voter preference surveys from 23 countries and over a 25-year period, confirms that coalition-directed voting occurs with considerable frequency in contexts with multiparty coalition governments.