“The Determinants of Volatility in Party Preferences over a Campaign: Evidence from 3 Spanish Elections”

The next PolBeRG seminar will take place on Tuesday 6th December – 19.10h - (FT 908). Pedro Riera, a Visiting Professor at the Department of Political Science, will present a paper titled “The Determinants of Volatility in Party Preferences over a Campaign: Evidence from 3 Spanish Elections”. 

Abstract:

This paper studies change and continuity of voting preferences over electoral campaigns. Building on the literature on valence politics, we argue that changes in candidates’ evaluations and heterogeneous assessments of parties’ competence to address different issues explain whether a voter reacts to the campaign efforts made by parties in the weeks before the elections and changes her behaviour accordingly. In order to test our hypotheses, we use data for from survey panels collected for the Spanish general elections of 2008, 2011 and 2015. Our findings suggest that change in candidates’ evaluations are the most important variable to explain not only party switches over the campaign but also temporal variation in turnout patterns.

Hope to see you all at the seminar!