Authors

Jan Goedeking¹;  ¹ Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany

Discussion

More than thirty years after transition to democracy, new parties continue to achieve notable successes in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper explores to which extent the ideological positions of voters and parties matter for the decision to vote for a new party. Based on logistic multilevel analyses using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems dataset, ParlGov and World Bank data, the main finding is the following: It is more likely that an individual votes for a new party if the new party is ideologically closer to the voter compared to the closest established party. Theoretically, one might expect that the effect of this proximity voting decreases under certain circumstances: Firstly, a bad government performance can benefit new parties: Voters eventually put ideological differences aside just to opt for a new player in the game that has not lost the trust to solve the country’s problems. Secondly, protest voters simply want to express their distrust towards established parties with their vote choice for a new party, without any ideological considerations. However, the effect of proximity voting remains robust under adverse conditions, such as high unemployment, high corruption, or among individuals that are prone to protest voting. The results imply that ideological considerations matter for voters. New party success in Central and Eastern Europe is not only a result of bad government performance or protest votes.