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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2020.102126
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Do parties perceive their voter potentials correctly? Reconsidering the spatial logic of electoral competition
[journal article]
Abstract Political parties strive for maximizing their vote shares. One way to achieve this goal is to attract voters from competitors. A precondition for strategies aiming at attracting these voters is that parties perceive their voter potentials among their rivals' electorates correctly. Yet, hardly anythi... view more
Political parties strive for maximizing their vote shares. One way to achieve this goal is to attract voters from competitors. A precondition for strategies aiming at attracting these voters is that parties perceive their voter potentials among their rivals' electorates correctly. Yet, hardly anything is known about such perceptions. To fill this gap, we develop analogue measures of a party's perceived and its actual voter potential for each competitor in a party system. Combining elite and mass surveys conducted in Germany, we show that perceived and actual voter potentials depend on spatial considerations but also that not all parties are able to correctly evaluate their potentials. These deviations can be traced back to differences in the perceived placement of political actors between elites and citizens. This supports the spatial logic of party competition but it also points to potential pitfalls for strategic behavior of political parties.... view less
Keywords
party; election campaign; voting behavior; Federal Republic of Germany
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Free Keywords
parties' perceptions; party competition; spatial models; voter potentials; 2017 candidate survey and 2017 post-election voter survey of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES)
Document language
English
Publication Year
2020
Journal
Electoral Studies, 65 (2020)
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/10419/218839
ISSN
1873-6890
Status
Postprint; peer reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0