Voter Switchers and Social Democracy in Contemporary Knowledge Capitalism: How Voter Rationales Signal Strategic Dilemmas of Social Democracy
Why do voters accede to or abandon social democratic parties in the most recent decades? This chapter analyzes the reasons that motivate voters go choose among parties. Are spatial considerations coming into play, that is, do voters move to parties that are more consistent with their preferences than those they abandon? This chapter tests this argument with European Election Study data from 1999 to 2019 focusing on those respondents who report a different party preference at the time of a survey compared to their past vote recall (“vote switchers”). The data reveal a robust relationship between switching direction and voter preferences, bearing out rational spatial theories of voting. For Social Democrats' strategy considerations, however, this brings to light an inconvenient fact: Voters abandon their parties for very different reasons heading to a plurality of alternatives. Consequently, no unified party strategy can stop the vote hemorrhage on all fronts of competition.
