Strategic Voting under Proportional Representation: Threshold Insurance in German Elections

Abstract

Does proportional representation imply incentives for strategic voting? This article investigates whether adherents of the major German parties voted against their preference in order to increase the chance of a majority coalition between their favourite party and the pre-electorally declared junior coalition partner. Focusing exclusively on the PR vote, the authors test whether strategic voting is guided by expectations with regard to the coalition formation stage. To that end they use a two-step estimation procedure to simultaneously predict (in-)complete party preferences and sincere and strategic voting in a random utility framework. Their results show that voters’ preferences, rather than mapping directly into party choice, are affected by their expectations on small parties’ re-entry chances.

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