Voter volatility and voting motives in Belgium. A Panel Study on Inter-Election and Campaign Volatility, 2009-2014.

The aim of this project is to broaden insights on electoral behavior and electoral volatility more specifically. Although this topic has received considerable scholarly attention, a process of dealignment warrants the need for a reconsideration of accepted theories on volatility and voting motives. First, socio-structural factors have been found to become less important in the vote choice process. Membership of social groups was traditionally believed to be associated with stable party preferences, even given low levels of political sophistication. As a result of this process of dealignment, the relation between political sophistication and electoral volatility should be reassessed. The literature on the direction of the effect of sophistication on vote switching is inconclusive and empirical results on individual volatility seem to be contradicting the explanations for volatility at an aggregate level. Second, dealignment has affected the explanatory power of traditional models of electoral behavior. As a consequence, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain party preferences and to determine what guides citizens’ vote choices and switches in vote choices more specifically. Previous results suggest that effects might differ for inter-election volatility on the one hand and intra-campaign volatility on the other hand. The use of recall-questions for measuring inter-election volatility, however, seriously hinders such comparisons. Therefore making use of a full panel study (building on an existing 2009 panel) covering both inter-election and campaign dynamics, this project can provide more reliable indications of these differences.