Tuesday Seminar – 23 February

Ambivalence Across the Globe:  Investigating the Effects of Political Ambivalence on Vote Switching in Multi-Party Systems

Klara Dentler (University of Mannheim)

Since the past two decades, vote switching has been on the rise. An under-researched dimension of this phenomenon is the impact of ambivalent political attitudes. Whilst the effects of ambivalence on vote switching have been investigated in the American political system, its application to multi-party systems has not been explored. In this paper, I extend the investigation of party and leader ambivalence to a variety of multi-party systems across the globe. For this research purpose, I use data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systemsincluding 51 countries with multi-party systems. The results provide empirical support and show that party ambivalence and leader ambivalence increase voters’ probability to switch parties at two consecutive elections. Therefore, this paper highlights once more the importance of ambivalence on understanding the underlying determinants of electoral volatility in 21^st century politics. 

Contact Semih Çakır if you would like to participate in the seminar.

This content has been updated on 19 February 2021 at 11 h 22 min.