09:30 - 11:10
P1
Room: North Hall
Panel Session 1
Anke Tresch - Explaining the (in-)stability of voters’ issue ownership perceptions
Jeffrey Nonnemacher - The Black Sheep Effect: Do Voters Punish Parties Who Deviate from the Party Family?
Florian Weiler - Preference voting and voter biases based on gender: Evidence from individual-level ballot data
Rosario Aguilar - Citizens’ Support for Populist or Programmatic Policies in Young Democracies: The Role of Emotions
The Black Sheep Effect: Do Voters Punish Parties Who Deviate from the Party Family?
P1-02
Presented by: Jeffrey Nonnemacher
Jeffrey Nonnemacher
University of PIttsburgh
Does the party family that a party belongs to have influence on the behavior of domestic voters? In this paper, I argue that a party’s party family gives valuable information to voters regarding the broader ideological goals of the party. As a result, parties that distance themselves and hold ideological positions counter to the positions of the party are more likely to lose voters and have voters misperceive their positions. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the Comparative Manifesto Project, I find support for my expectations. As divergence between a party and the rest of its party family increases, voters are more likely to switch from that party and are more likely to misperceive that party’s true position. Importantly, this increased propensity to misperceive the parties’ positions from party family divergence increases the likelihood a voter switches. These findings have important implications for understanding voter behavior and how voters perceive parties in increasingly globalized politics.