The Effect of Pre-Electoral Party Coordination on Vote Choice: Evidence from the Italian Regional Elections
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Author | Carolina Plescia |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321715607512 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
607512PSX0010.1177/0032321715607512Political StudiesPlescia
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Article
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(1) 144 –160
The Effect of Pre-Electoral
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321715607512
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Choice: Evidence from the
Italian Regional Elections
Carolina Plescia
Abstract
Although it is theoretically relevant, the effect of pre-electoral coalitions on vote choice remains a
largely unexplored area in the field of party strategy. The article addresses this gap by focusing on
the Italian regional elections, where the electoral rules allow parties to run alone and, at the same
time, to present pre-electoral coalitions on the ballot paper. This setting allows us to investigate
under what conditions citizens vote for their preferred party and the coalition that this party
indicated to coalesce with. The results suggest that ideological congruence and the size of the
parties entering a pre-electoral agreement are decisive factors. Findings also reveal that the time
elapsed since the establishment of a coalition has no effect on vote choice.
Keywords
pre-electoral coalitions, party coordination, strategic voting, candidates, Italian regional elections
Accepted: 28 July 2015
Introduction
The incentives to coordinate for both parties and voters depend on the institutional envi-
ronment in which they operate. Under majoritarian rules, voters coordinate by deserting
those parties unlikely to obtain any seats and thus to avoid ‘wasting’ their vote. Small
parties are discouraged from participating in majoritarian elections since they are unlikely
to obtain any seats. When it comes to proportional systems, these can be designed to
guarantee representation for all but the tiniest of parties, to a large extent obviating stra-
tegic incentives (Cox, 1997). The result is that strategic coordination by both voters and
parties is typically higher in disproportional systems.
Political parties can coordinate in several ways. They can compete with a joint mani-
festo, support common candidates or announce that they want to form a governing coalition
Department of Methods in the Social Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Corresponding author:
Carolina Plescia, Department of Methods in the Social Sciences, University of Vienna, Rathausstrasse 19/9,
1010 Vienna, Austria.
Email: carolina.plescia@univie.ac.at
Plescia
145
after the elections (Powell, 2000). One of the most common coordination mechanisms is the
formation of pre-electoral coalitions. Despite the fact that pre-electoral coalitions are very
common and can significantly influence both election and policy outcomes (Golder, 2006),
there has been little theoretical or empirical research on pre-electoral coalitions. As of today,
the majority of the literature focuses almost exclusively on government coalitions that form
after an election (Laver, 1998; Martin and Stevenson, 2001); only more recently has atten-
tion been given to the formation of pre-electoral coalitions (see Golder, 2005, 2006).
However, while we know today about the conditions of pre- and post-electoral coali-
tions’ formation, the effect of pre-electoral coalitions on vote choice remains a largely
unexplored area. In the words of Thomas Gschwend and Marc Hooghe (2008), ‘at pre-
sent, there is no research available on the question of how voters respond to the formation
of pre-electoral coalitions’ (p. 557).
Determining under what conditions citizens vote for their preferred party and the coa-
lition that this party indicated to coalesce with is not an easy task. The main difficulty in
examining this research question is that voters only express one vote and the assessment
of the impact of pre-electoral agreements can only be a counterfactual one (Gschwend
and Hooghe, 2008). Thus, unless high-quality survey data are available to reveal voters’
motivations, such assessment is not possible. This is the reason why the only available
work on the impact of pre-electoral coalitions on vote choice uses a laboratory experi-
ment. The experimental study conducted in Belgium asked 1255 students to cast two
votes: one vote on a ballot with individual parties and another vote on a ballot with coali-
tions. Gschwend and Hooghe (2008: 556) found that the decision whether to follow the
coalition or not can be traced back to four considerations: dislike of the coalition partner,
ideological congruence between coalition partners, size of the initially preferred party,
and being attracted to a specific high-profile candidate.
This article employs the Italian regional elections to study the effect of pre-electoral coali-
tions on the election outcome in order to fill this gap in the literature. Italians vote for their
regional councils by casting two votes on the same electoral ballot. One vote is for a party on
the proportional tier of the ballot paper and another vote is for the future president of the
region on the majoritarian tier. Parties often coordinate by running as independent entities on
the proportional tier but presenting common candidates and symbols on the majoritarian tier;
for this reason, the majoritarian vote is usually a vote for a pre-electoral coalition. Examining
vote patterns in the Italian case then offers an opportunity to observe under what conditions
voters follow their party into the coalition. At the same time, it enables us to control for the
effect of other voting determinants, primarily candidate-specific factors.
This study is important not only because it aims to explore a neglected area in the field
of party strategy but also because it offers insights into voting behaviour under an expand-
ing set of electoral rules, mixed systems and also into the widespread practice of present-
ing voters with pre-electoral coalitions in many of these systems. In addition, this study
can make a contribution to the understanding of strategic voting more generally. Studies
of strategic voting specify a certain chain of reasoning the voter employs before casting a
vote for a party in a way that would seem to be counter-intuitive to a preference for a
party. I analyse this counter-intuitive behaviour further by including the effect of formal
pre-electoral cartels on vote choice. Specifically, the uniqueness of the Italian case allows
us to assess voters’ strategic reactions to the formation of pre-electoral cartels for the first
time.
This article is structured as follows. It first provides a general theory and develops the
hypotheses to be tested. Then it introduces the case under study and it presents the data
146
Political Studies 65 (1)
and methods. Subsequently, the article describes the results based on the use of aggregate
data and extends the analysis to the individual level using surveys. Finally, the article
discusses the results and their implications.
Theoretical Arguments
Of 292 elections in 20 countries, Sona Golder (2005, 2006) found that 44% had pre-
electoral coalitions, and one-quarter of the governments were formed by a pre-electoral
coalition. Recent works suggest that voters are not only aware of pre-electoral pacts (e.g.
Bowler et al., 2010) but also that the coalition preferences of voters have an impact on the
outcome of the government formation process after the elections (Debus and Müller,
2013). Yet we do not know how voters respond to the formation of pre-electoral coali-
tions. The only study that has examined this question is the experimental study conducted
by Gschwend and Hooghe (2008). My aim is to evaluate hypotheses about the effect of
pre-electoral coalitions on voting behaviour using real-world data.
I note first that when party elites decide to form a pre-electoral coalition, voters subse-
quently have two options: they could follow their preferred party’s elites and stay within
the coalition, or voters could desert the pre-electoral coalition to which their party belongs
and cast their vote for some other party or coalition. There are two different reasons to
expect that many voters will follow the lead of their party elites. First, it is to be expected
that those who identify with a party or strongly prefer a party above all the others will be
more likely to ‘simply’ follow their party into the coalition. Second, if voters are instru-
mentally motivated and looking for ways to optimise the effect of their vote (Cox, 1997),
it seems likely that they will stay within the coalition. Gschwend and Hooghe (2008: 560)
explain that instrumentally motivated voters will indeed understand the considerable ben-
efits of joining a pre-electoral coalition.
Yet several conditions exist under which voters may deviate from these baseline pre-
dictions. The first hypothesis is based on the influence that candidates might have. Several
scholars have proven that voters’ evaluations of the personalities of candidates play an
increasingly important role in determining electoral preferences (Shugart et al., 2005).
Thus, the hypothesis is that when voters prefer a candidate who is nominated by a differ-
ent party or coalition, they face serious cross-pressures to desert the pre-electoral coali-
tion to which their party belongs in order to vote for that preferred candidate. Conversely,
when the preferred candidate belongs to the coalition endorsed by the preferred party, this
might serve as an incentive to remain loyal to the coalition.
There are at...
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