Sascha Huber
Coalitions and Voting Behaviour in a differentiating Multi-Party-System

S. 65-87 in: Bernhard Weßels, Hans Rattinger, Sigrid Roßteutscher, Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck (Hrsg.): Voters on the Move or on the Run?. 2014. Oxford: Oxford University Press

In this chapter, it will be examined whether vote choices in the German multi-party system are guided not only by party and leader evaluations but also by coalition evaluations. It is argued that coalitions are meaningful political objects for voters in multi-party systems that can have effects on vote choices independent from party and leader evaluations—not only for sophisticated voters. With a growing number of parties and an increasingly complex party system over time, coalition considerations might have become even more important—as political objects and as cues for voting behavior.