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https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2020.1866584
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Putting electoral competition where it belongs: comparing vote-based measures of electoral competition
[journal article]
Abstract Electoral competition is a cornerstone of representative democracies. However, measuring its extent and intensity constitutes a challenging task for the discipline. Based on multilevel conceptualizations, we discuss three different measures of political competition (electoral volatility, vote switch... view more
Electoral competition is a cornerstone of representative democracies. However, measuring its extent and intensity constitutes a challenging task for the discipline. Based on multilevel conceptualizations, we discuss three different measures of political competition (electoral volatility, vote switching, and voters' availability) and their relation to each other. We argue that electoral volatility and vote switching as indicators of electoral competitiveness tend to misestimate the degree of competition in multiparty systems. As an alternative, we propose focusing on the individual’s propensity to vote for different parties, i.e. electoral availability. Using data provided by the European Election Studies, we compare availability to electoral volatility and vote switching in the framework of necessary and sufficient conditions. Our regression results show that operationalizing electoral competitiveness based on voter availability - which is increasingly retrievable from cross-national voter surveys - helps to avoid type-II errors, i.e. identifying competitive elections as less or non-competitive.... view less
Keywords
voting behavior; party; preference; en: floating voter oder swing voter?; multi-party system
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Free Keywords
availability; political competition; volatility; vote switching; European Election Study (EES), 1989-2014
Document language
English
Publication Year
2023
Page/Pages
p. 1-18
Journal
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 33 (2023) 2
Handle
http://hdl.handle.net/10419/233029
ISSN
1745-7297
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed