Coalition preferences in multiparty systems

Abstract

"Coalition preferences in multiparty systems have received increasing attention in recent years, both as an additional political identity beyond parties and as another explanatory factor for vote decisions above and beyond party preferences. In this paper, we use survey data from the 2006 Austrian election to investigate the accessibility of party and coalition preferences and the extent to which coalition preferences can be explained by party preferences and other affective and cognitive factors such as candidates, ideology, and issue positions. The evidence suggests that questions about coalitions are associated with longer response times than similar questions about party preferences, that is, respondents must make more of a cognitive effort to form and/or retrieve them. Finally, coalition preferences are only partially predicted by party preferences and candidate evaluations, while policy preferences are mostly unrelated. Coalition preferences emerge as a fairly independent factor in multiparty systems." (author's abstract)