Are Coalition-directed Voters Risk-averse?

When voters support parties in multi-party democracies it is often uncertain what coalition government the party is likely to join. Are voters adversely affected by this type of uncertainty? In this paper, we present observational and experimental results that support the idea that coalition-directed voters are risk-averse. The perception of uncertain coalition outlooks of a party negatively affects the propensity to vote for parties in survey data, even when holding the expected coalition returns constant. In a survey vignette experiment during the German Federal election, we replicate this pattern for the CDU/CSU. Uncertain coalition outlooks reduce the propensity to support the CDU/CSU, compared to certain coalition outlooks with the same expected coalition return. The findings provide important insights for research on strategic voting theories and parties’ coalition strategies.