M. Meffert, S. Huber, T. Gschwend, F. Urban Pappi, More than wishful thinking Causes and consequences of voters’ electoral expectations about parties and coalitions, Electoral Studies 2011, Vol 30, Is.pdf

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Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 804
–
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Electoral Studies
More than wishful thinking: Causes and consequences of voters
’
electoral
expectations about parties and coalitions
Michael F. Meffert a , * , Sascha Huber b , 1 , Thomas Gschwend c , 2 , Franz Urban Pappi d , 3
a Department of Political Science, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden, The Netherlands
b Lehrstuhl für Politische Wissenschaft I, Universität Mannheim, 68131 Mannheim, Germany
c Graduate School of Economic & Social Sciences (GESS), Universität Mannheim, 68131 Mannheim, Germany
d Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung (MZES), Universität Mannheim, 68131 Mannheim, Germany
article info
abstract
Article history:
Received 26 May 2009
Received in revised form 27 July 2011
Accepted 5 August 2011
Accurate expectations about the outcome of elections play a central role in psychological
and economic theories of voting. In the paper, three questions about voters
’
expectations
are investigated. First, we identify and test several factors that in
uence the overall
accuracy or quality of voters
’
expectations. Second, the phenomenon of
“
wishful thinking
”
is tested and con
rmed for expectations about the electoral performance of individual
parties and coalitions. Finally, two mechanisms how expectations might in
Keywords:
Wishful thinking
Electoral expectations
Strategic voting
Bandwagon effect
uence voting
behavior are identi
ed and tested. Based on surveys from Austria and Germany, the results
suggest that voters not only rely on expectations to avoid casting
votes for parties
without electoral chances, but that they are able to engage in fairly sophisticated strategic
coalition voting.
“
wasted
”
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
models of voting assume strategic coordination, that is,
voters have to be able to form expectations about the
behavior of other voters and thus the outcome of the
upcoming election in order to maximize the expected utility
of their own voting decision ( Cox, 1997; McKelvey and Patty,
2006 ). Polls (and knowledge of election histories) can serve
as a coordination signal ( Forsythe et al., 1993; Gschwend,
2007 ). Similar assumptions are made, explicitly or implic-
itly, by psychological theories such as the spiral of silence
( Noelle-Neumann, 1993 ) or the bandwagon and underdog
effect ( Mutz, 1998; Simon, 1954 ). Empirical research on
voters
Are voters able to form accurate expectations about
election outcomes, and do these expectations matter? To
answer these questions, we start with the observation that
media coverage of polls during political campaigns is exten-
sive, giving even voters without much interest in politics an
opportunity to learn rather sophisticated information about
an upcoming election ( Brettschneider, 2000, 2003 ). If voters
choose to do so, they can use this readily available informa-
tion to form fairly accurate expectations. Game theoretic
electoral expectations, however, takes a rather skep-
tical view of the claim that voters are able form highly
accurate expectations. Voters with strong partisan prefer-
ences tend to engage in wishful thinking and overestimate
the chances of preferred parties and candidates and/or
underestimate the chances of disliked parties and candidates
( Mutz, 1998 ). As a consequence, voters
’
31 71 5273815.
nl (M.F. Meffert).
1 Tel.:
Corresponding author. Tel.:
þ
31 71 5273862; fax:
þ
*
þ
49 621 1812064; fax:
þ
49 621 1812067. shuber@rumms.uni-
expectations appear
to be a mix of objective, factual poll information and
preference-driven projections (e.g. Blais and Bodet, 2006;
Meffert and Gschwend, 2011 ).
’
Tel.:
þ
49 621 1812087;
fax:
þ
49 621 1813699. gschwend@uni-
Tel.:
þ
49 621 1812810; fax:
þ
49 621 1812845. franz.pappi@mzes.uni-
0261-3794/$
–
see front matter
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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M.F. Meffert et al. / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 804
–
815
805
Because most previous research has focused on major-
itarian U.S. or British party systems, we focus on multiparty
systems and assess the ability of Austrian and German
voters to form expectations about election outcomes as
well as the subsequent electoral consequences of these
expectations. More speci
of explanations, in particular that people
s social interactions
in real life are highly selective, and that the (induced) pref-
erences in the laboratory are not suf
’
cient to produce
wishful thinking effects. In his own analysis, Price (2000)
shows that the latter problem can be addressed by a care-
fully designed desirability manipulation (involving two
competing social groups). Because the analyses reported in
our paper draw on partisan preferences in real world
settings, the presence of wishful thinking can be considered
as fairly certain and similar to previous studies.
But how can the fact that voters engage in wishful
thinking despite easy access to accurate poll information be
reconciled? In multiparty systems, it will be useful to
differentiate between the overall accuracy or quality of
voters
cally, we
rst identify and test
several
factors that in
uence the overall accuracy and
quality of voters
expectations. Second, the phenomenon of
wishful thinking is tested and con
’
rmed for expectations
about the electoral performance of individual parties and
extended to judgments about coalitions. The lack of
research on the latter constitutes a striking gap in the
literature. Finally,
two mechanisms how expectations
might in
ed and tested,
in particular strategic voting and the bandwagon effect. The
analyses are based on two general population surveys from
Austria and Germany that measured voters
uence voting behavior are identi
expectations and the tendency to distort the expec-
tations for speci
’
c preferred or disliked parties. The overall
quality of expectations should bene
expectations in
unusual detail. The following review will focus
’
t from ready access to
poll information, while not precluding distortions for speci
rst on the
c
parties. Once strong partisan predispositions come into play
along with polls that contradict preferred outcomes, factual
information will quickly lose its luster.
The literature offers many explanations that can be
narrowed down to a number of factors that might explain
the overall quality of voters
sources of voters
expectations, followed by the conse-
quences for voting behavior.
’
2. Sources of voters
electoral expectations
’
The formation of meaningful expectations about elec-
toral outcomes requires current and precise information.
What might appear to be a challenging task, given the well-
known low levels of factual political knowledge of many
voters ( Zaller, 1992 ), can be accomplished rather easily. The
media coverage of national political campaigns spends
considerable time reporting results and trends based on
frequent pre-election polls ( Brettschneider, 2000, 2003 ). The
reality, of course, is more complex. First, even professional
polls do not always accurately predict the election outcome
(as was the case in the Austrian and German general elec-
tions analyzed here). Second, the (German) media coverage
is dominated by subjective claims and assessments by
journalists and politicians that are not constrained in any
waybyprofessionalpolls( Donsbach and Weisbach, 2005 ).
As a starting point, it is nevertheless reasonable to assume
that voters have fairly easy access to objective and for the
most part fairly accurate information about the electoral
chances of parties during political campaigns. The more
interesting question is about the recipients of such infor-
mation d whether and how voters actually acquire this
information to form accurate expectations.
According to the pertinent literature, starting with the
classic study The People
expectations and/or the
tendency to engage in wishful thinking. The following
review categorizes the factors in political motivations such
as partisan preferences and non-partisan political knowl-
edge as well as rational or strategic considerations and
social context.
’
2.1. Partisan and non-partisan political motivations
Partisan preferences, in particular party identi
cation,
exert a powerful
uence over political attitudes and
perceptions ( Bartels, 2002 ). Thus, it is hardly surprising
that voters
in
expectations about electoral outcomes should
be affected by these preferences. A partisan preference
implies a strong directional motivation that favors
preferred outcomes or parties over disliked outcomes or
parties. Psychologically, both motivational and cognitive
mechanisms have been proposed to explain this self-
serving misperception ( Babad, 1995, 1997; Bar-Hillel and
Budescu, 1995; Price, 2000 ). Granberg and Brent (1983)
favor Heider
’
’
s (1958) balance theory as explanation for
wishful thinking. Because the surveys used in the analyses
below do not allow a test of the precise psychological
mechanisms, the review will not address this issue in more
detail.
Partisan preferences are expected to introduce a direc-
tional partisan bias, but they might have non-partisan
implications as well. Voters with a strong party identi
’
sChoice( Lazarsfeld et al., 1948 ),
voters
expectations frequently seem to follow a different
logic. Despite ready access to objective poll information, the
literature
’
nds fairly consistent wishful thinking effects, that
is, perceptions distorted by existing political preferences.
Voters (like sports fans) seem to engage in strong and
consistent wishful thinking in favor of the home team
( Abramson et al., 1992; Babad et al., 1992; Babad and
Yacobus, 1993; Granberg and Brent, 1983; Uhlaner and
Grofman, 1986 ). In addition, wishful thinking appears to be
one of the few effects that are reliably found in survey
research studies but that are very dif
ca-
tion and clearly de
ned political preferences should exhibit
a higher degree of political interest and involvement than
voters without these convictions. All else being equal,
a partisan voter is invested in the political system, and as
a
( Lewis-Beck and Skalaban, 1989 ,
p. 153) likely to be familiar with the parties, their approx-
imate electoral strengths, and likely coalitions ( Armstrong
and Duch, 2010; Meffert and Gschwend, 2010, 2011 ). If
these claims are correct, partisan preferences should have
two distinct effects. They should play a unique and central
“
member of the polity
”
cult to recreate in
laboratory settings. Carefully designed experiments often fail
to show any remarkable wishful thinking effects (e.g. Bar-
Hillel and Budescu, 1995 ). Price (2000) suggests a number
806
M.F. Meffert et al. / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 804
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role in wishful thinking by distorting the expectations for
speci
2.3. Social context
c preferred or disliked parties. But they should also
have a positive effect on the overall accuracy or quality of
voters
The literature on wishful thinking offers another, very
different explanation why the expectations of individual
voters might differ from the national average. If voters live in
regions, constituencies, or states that differ politically from
the national level ( Uhlaner and Grofman, 1986 ), or if they are
embedded in politically homogenous personal networks
( Fischer and Budescu, 1995 ), they might encounter only
a biased sample of political opinions that they mistakenly
extrapolate to the national level. Fischer and Budescu
(1995) , for example, suggest that Israeli voters have only
selective social interactions that result in distorted infer-
ences about electoral support for their candidates and
parties. These approaches assume face-to-face contact.
However, it might be the case that mediated expressions
have similar effects. Daschmann (2000) shows that voter
statements reported in the media have a larger effect on the
perceived climate of opinion than poll results.
Because polls have become such a prevalent feature of
media coverage during national campaigns, it would be
reasonable to expect that social context plays a lesser role
than it used to do, especially in the study by Uhlaner and
Grofman (1986) . But if considerable regional differences
exist, for example when states in a federal system are
dominated by different parties, it is nevertheless still plau-
sible that voters
expectations due to stronger political involvement
and higher levels of political awareness.
Compared to partisan preferences, the effect of non-
partisan political motivations such as political interest
and political knowledge is much easier to describe.
Without any directional partisan implications, interest in
politics and the campaign as well as the cognitive ability to
process political information more ef
’
ciently should have
positive effects on the quality of voters
expectations.
Political knowledge in particular has been found to play
a crucial role in the acquisition of political information in
general ( Price and Zaller, 1993; Zaller, 1992 ). It can also
improve the accuracy of forecasts and lower the tendency
of biased information processing such as wishful thinking
(e.g. Lemert, 1986; Babad, 1997; Dolan and Holbrook, 2001;
Meffert and Gschwend, 2011; Uhlaner and Grofman, 1986;
Yaniv et al., 2002 ; but see Babad, 1995 ). Voters with a high
level political knowledge should be more receptive to
political information such as polls and better able to store
and retrieve such information from memory. It is an open
and empirical question whether partisan preferences still
exert a non-directional effect
’
if political
interest and
knowledge are controlled for.
nd themselves in biased social contexts. In
fact, accurate perceptions in or of biased contexts might lead
to biased
2.2. Rational and strategic considerations
“
out-of-sample
”
forecasts for the national level.
From the perspective of a rational voter, the main goal of
a vote decision is to maximize expected utility d basically
the bene
3. Electoral consequences of voters
’
expectations
t derived from the policy output of the next
government ( Downs, 1957; Riker and Ordeshook, 1968 ). In
order to maximize expected utility, a rational voter cannot
rely on policy and partisan preferences alone but has to take
into account the expected outcome of the next election.
Based on these expectations, a voter might expect a higher
bene
The formation of expectations about electoral outcomes
is an interesting topic in itself, but the real signi
cance of
voters
expectations, whether accurate or distorted, derives
from their electoral consequences. As documented by Mutz
(1998) , there are numerous areas of research that have
investigated this question, including momentum in Amer-
ican presidential primaries ( Bartels, 1988 ), the effect of
publicized exit polls (and pre-election polls more gener-
ally) on election day ( Sudman, 1986 ), and assorted other
theories such as the spiral of silence ( Noelle-Neumann,
1993 ) and the third-person effect ( Pan et al., 2006 ). These
approaches share the assumption that the perception of
others
’
t by deserting the most preferred party if it has a low
chance of winning. By casting a strategic vote for a less-
preferred choice with better chances, the voter is more
likely to obtain a desirable outcome ( Cox, 1997; Fisher,
2004 ). Thus, strategic voters need poll information to form
current and accurate expectations. The cost of acquiring
readily available poll information is, after all, very low. The
extent to which a rational voter needs such information to
form highly accurate expectations should depend on the
dif
opinions will have direct consequences on attitudes
and behaviors. Despite this interest and extensive amount
of research, the evidence for most of these theories is at
best mixed ( Mutz, 1998 ). Mutz has nevertheless identi
’
culty and uncertainty of the decision. If, for example,
a voter prefers two or more parties to a similar degree (that
is, would obtain the same utility from both parties), the
optimal decision will be more dif
ed
a number of promising pathways how perceptions of mass
opinion might in
cult and depend on the
electoral chances of the parties, increasing the need for
precise poll information. Under these circumstances, the
expectations about electoral chances will determine which
party will maximize the expected utility. Larcinese (2007) ,
for example, reports evidence that voters in constituencies
with close contests have a higher demand for campaign
information.
Finally, and rather obviously, only voters who intend to
cast a vote should have a need to form highly accurate
expectations. The usefulness of this information will be
much lower for those who plan to abstain.
uence (impersonally) individual atti-
tudes and behaviors. Two of these, strategic voting and the
bandwagon effect, have considerable support and are of
particular interest here.
3.1. Strategic voting
If voters are rational actors that maximize their expected
utility, they have to take into account the electoral chances
of parties and candidates. The most obvious strategy is to
avoid a
vote for a party or candidate without any
electoral chances. Beyond this basic motivation, the vote
“
wasted
”
M.F. Meffert et al. / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 804
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815
807
becomes only strategic if the bene
ciary is a party other
than the most preferred party, and one that will produce
a more desirable outcome, for example a coalition govern-
ment ( Blais et al., 2006; Meffert and Gschwend, 2010, 2011;
Shikano et al., 2009 ). In order to make such a judgment,
a voter in a multiparty systemwould have to be familiar not
only with the electoral strength of multiple parties but also
estimate which coalitions could and would be formed. Only
voters with a suf
As Mutz (1998) points out, the mechanism of the
bandwagon effect considers perceptions of mass opinion as
a simple heuristic cue. Basing a vote decision on such
a social cue will be considered
by proponents of
the rational voter paradigm. It is nevertheless clear that
voters without much political knowledge or strong partisan
predispositions should be more susceptible to this kind of
in
“
irrational
”
uence while voters with a high level of political
knowledge should be more immune.
cient level of political knowledge should
have the ability to engage in such strategic (coalition)
voting.
Given these high requirements, it is necessary to
address and justify the relevance of this decision strategy.
Strategic voting has been documented mostly for political
systems with majoritarian elections, in particular the
British system with its single member districts. However,
there is increasing evidence that strategic voting also
happens in parliamentary systems using proportional
representation ( Abramson et al., 2010; Duch et al., 2010 ). In
both cases, the number of strategic voters in representative
surveys is relatively low, ranging between 5 and 15 percent
( Fisher, 2004 ). This share is misleading for a number of
reasons. First, it refers only to actual strategic voters (or
realized strategic votes), excluding all those who might
have considered a strategic vote but decided against it.
After all, the cognitive decision process of strategic voting
cannot be observed directly. Second, a fairly small number
of voters is suf
4. Data and methods
4.1. Data
Two nationally representative pre-election surveys from
Austria and Germany were used to test the hypotheses. The
Austrian survey was conducted September 19
30, 2006,
ending the day before the general election for the Austrian
Nationalrat on October 1, 2006. A nationally representative
sample of 1501 respondents was interviewed by phone.
The German survey was conducted August 8 to September
17, 2005, ending the day before the general election for the
German Bundestag on September 18, 2005. A representa-
tive sample of 3583 respondents was interviewed by
phone. Both surveys include a number of similar measures
for party and coalition preferences as well as electoral
expectations. The subsequent analyses will report similar
models for both countries that differ only for very few
variables that are unique to each data set. Before discussing
the measures in more detail, some background information
for each election will be helpful.
–
cient to have a decisive impact in close
elections, giving strategic voters a disproportionate in
u-
ence. Third and most important, strategic voting will only
happen if the appropriate incentives and opportunities are
given ( Herrmann, 2010; Linhart and Huber, 2009 ). For
example, voters must have plausible alternative choices. By
focusing only on those with an opportunity to vote strate-
gically, Alvarez et al. (2006) have shown that the share of
strategic voters increases dramatically. A similar analytical
strategy will be used below.
4.2. The election contexts in Austria and Germany
At the beginning of the 2006 election campaign for the
Austrian Nationalrat, six parties had reasonable chances of
obtaining seats in the next parliament ( Müller, 2008;
Pappi, 2007 ). These included the two large parties, the
governing conservative People ’ s Party (ÖVP) and its chal-
lenger, the Social Democrats (SPÖ). Among the smaller
parties, the nationalist and populist Freedom Party (FPÖ)
and the environmental Greens (Die Grünen) were not only
two well established parties but also expected to do rather
well, likely reaching ten or more percent. Two other small
parties were fairly new. The Alliance for the Future of
Austria (BZÖ) was founded in the spring of 2005 by former
members of the FPÖ and included all FPÖ ministers in the
coalition government with the ÖVP and most FPÖ
members in parliament. The BZÖ effectively replaced the
FPÖ as the junior coalition partner of the ÖVP. This,
however, did not lead to an electoral advantage. The polls
gave the BZÖ only minor chances of passing the Austrian
minimum vote threshold of four percent. The other new
party,
3.2. The Bandwagon effect
ed by
Mutz (1998) is the classic bandwagon effect. It is rather
straightforward and merely assumes that people want to
follow the perceived winner. This mechanism has been
used to explain momentum in presidential primaries, the
phenomenon that early winners and/or a front-runner
status in the polls creates a dynamic that draws uncom-
mitted voters to the
A second promising pathway of in
uence identi
candidate ( Bartels, 1988 ).
While the evidence from presidential primaries in the U.S.
is by far the strongest, there is also evidence of more
limited bandwagon effects for other elections and in
various other countries. For example, Gimpel and Harvey
(1997) show that such expectations played a role in
particular early during the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign,
Lanoue and Bowler (1998) show that district-level expec-
tations during the 1988 Canadian election lead not only to
strategic voting but also to a limited bandwagon effect
bene
“
winning
”
was founded by an independent
member of the European Parliament, mostly as a protest
against the established parties. The polls gave him
a reasonable chance of passing the minimum vote
threshold. Based on the polls, the unpopular incumbent
coalition of ÖVP and BZÖ was expected to lose its majority,
but the ÖVP was still expected to stay ahead of the SPÖ by
a few percentage points. With BZÖ and Martin close to the
“
Liste Dr. Martin,
”
tting even the least preferred party, and McAllister
and Studlar (1991) as well as Nadeau et al. (1994) present
evidence for a limited but consistent bandwagon effect in
British elections.
808
M.F. Meffert et al. / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 804
–
815
4% threshold, the outcome of the election was fairly
uncertain.
The polls, however, missed the election outcome. The
SPÖ (35.3%) ended up with the largest vote share, beating
the unexpectedly weak ÖVP (34.3%) by a small margin. As
expected, Greens (11.0%) and FPÖ (11.0%) performed very
well. The BZÖ (4.1%) performed better than expected and
(barely) managed to pass the minimum vote threshold.
Martin (2.8%) clearly failed to gain the necessary support.
As a consequence, only one two-party coalition, a grand
coalition of SPÖ and ÖVP, had an absolute majority to form
a government, which they eventually did.
In Germany, the governing coalition of Social Democrats
(SPD) and Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) called the
next general election for the Bundestag one year early after
suffering a signi
A particular challenge is the measurement of accurate
expectations. Various approaches have been used in the
literature (see Blais et al., 2008 ). The most challenging
approaches try to obtain precise numerical estimates,
either of party vote shares or seats in parliament. These
approaches might delight a political scientist, but it is
rather unlikely that voters have (and should have) precise
knowledge of these numbers. Some respondents will give
impossible answers (
), forcing major adjustments
to the data or the exclusion of respondents from the anal-
ysis (e.g. Levine, 2007 ). In the context of a phone survey,
even politically sophisticated respondents will often fail to
give precise numerical estimates for
“
outliers
”
ve or more parties
that will add up to 100 percent (or know the precise
number of seats in parliament).
There are other and more reasonable ways of measuring
expectations. For small parties in political systems with
minimum vote thresholds, a more meaningful question asks
respondents about the likelihood that a party will be able to
pass the minimum vote threshold. For larger parties, the
question can be posed as performance relative to a mean-
ingful reference point such as the previous election result
(more votes, fewer votes, or unchanged). Finally, the ques-
tion of the election winner can be open, letting respondents
de
cant loss in a crucial state election in May
2005. According to the polls, the two main opposition
parties, Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the liberal Free
Democrats (FDP), had a reasonable chance to win the
upcoming election. In addition, the newly constituted Left
Party (Linkspartei) introduced considerable uncertainty in
the campaign. The Left Party was the result of a merger of
the PDS (the successor party of the former communist
party in East Germany) and the WASG (a fairly new party in
the Western part of Germany drawing disaffected and/or
former members of labor unions and SPD). In the polls, this
party surpassed both FDP and Greens during the summer.
Because no other party was willing to form a coalition with
this party, a strong showing was likely to prevent either
SPD and Greens or CDU and FDP from forming a coalition
government, forcing the formation of either an unprece-
dented and unwieldy three-party coalition or, much more
likely, a grand coalition between CDU and SPD.
Similar to Austria, the polls performed poorly in pre-
dicting the election outcome. The CDU (35.2%) lost about
ne the winner as a party, a candidate, or a coalition. In
fact, the meaning of winning and losing can be quite
ambiguous in multiparty systems with coalition govern-
ments ( Hardmeier and Roth, 2003 ). The Austrian survey was
especially designed to collect data for all these measures,
while the German survey offers only a more limited subset.
In order to evaluate the quality and accuracy of the
electoral expectations, a plausible objective benchmark is
needed. Published polls that were available while the survey
was in the
eld are the obvious choice. In both countries, the
polls did not
uctuate much during these periods. More
ve percentage points compared to the most recent polls
before the election, barely staying ahead of the SPD (34.2%).
The FDP (9.8%) performed much better than predicted,
followed by Left Party (8.7%) and Greens (8.1%). Given the
strong showing of the Left Party, CDU and SPD eventually
formed a grand coalition.
speci
cally, for each forecast or judgment that was sup-
ported by the polls, a respondent would receive a point (see
Table 1 for details). For example, if a respondent thought
that it was
“
likely
”
or
“
certain ” that a party would obtain
suf
cient votes to pass the minimum vote threshold and the
polls showed this party above the threshold, voter expec-
tation and external poll matched. If a respondent made
a wrong or no judgment at all, no point was awarded. In the
Austrian survey, respondents answered questions about the
electoral chances of six parties and seven plausible coali-
tions (whether they would have a majority after the elec-
tion). The
4.3. Measurement of preferences and expectations
The two key measures to investigate the issue of wishful
thinking are partisan preferences and respondents
expec-
tations about the electoral outcome. It is important to keep
in mind that in multiparty systems voters can have pref-
erences for more than one party. As a consequence, a single
party identi
’
nal accuracy measure is the percentage of correct
forecasts (out of 13). On average, 70 percent of these judg-
ments were accurate. In the German survey, respondents
were asked similar questions about the three small parties
and one question about a coalition. Here, the accuracy
measure is again the percentage of correct forecasts (out of
4). On average, respondents made correct predictions in 66
percent of the cases.
cation scale is not suf
cient
to measure
multiple partisan preferences.
Respondents in both surveys rated the relevant parties
in each country on 11-point evaluation scales, ranging from
5(
“
don
’
t like the party at all
”
)to
þ
5(
“
like the party very
much
). While these party evaluations can be used directly
as a measure of party preference, an additional dichoto-
mous party preference measure was constructed to identify
respondents that rated a single party (or coalition) higher
than all the other parties (or coalitions). In the Austrian
survey, a similar question was asked for seven plausible
coalitions.
”
5. Results
5.1. Overall quality of electoral expectations
rst step, the overall quality or ability of respon-
dents to make accurate electoral predictions is investigated.
In a

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