Polarization, party characteristics, and issue voting

This paper suggests that spatial voting (i.e., the impact of voter-party distances on party utilities) varies in strength between contexts and parties. It should be stronger in more polarized party systems, as well as for larger or more extreme parties. This study relies on a new voting choice model, which allows the impact of voter-party issue distances to vary between both parties and districts. These hypotheses are tested based on data from the 2011 Swiss national elections. The results confirm that spatial voting is stronger in polarized party systems. They further show that spatial factors play a larger role in the evaluation of extreme parties than of center parties, and that party extremity moderates the strength of the polarization effect.