Random Walk or Planned Excursion? Continuity and Change in the Left–Right Positions of Political Parties

Russell J. Dalton*, Ian McAllister

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    98 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Implicit in theories of democratic elections is the idea of change—or at least the potential for change. Elections provide the opportunity for citizens to change their party preferences and thus alter the course of government. In addition, political parties can change their programmatic positions to attract new voters. Our research asks how much parties change their Left–Right positions between elections and what this tells us about parties’ strategic choices. We utilize data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project and the Chapel Hill Expert Surveys. We demonstrate very high stability in parties’ Left–Right position over time. Furthermore, we find only modest evidence that parties change their Left–Right position in a conscious process of vote seeking.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)759-787
    Number of pages29
    JournalComparative Political Studies
    Volume48
    Issue number6
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 9 May 2015

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