Author:

Keywords:

electoral volatility, political sophistication, cognitive mobilization, campaign switching

Abstract:

This paper investigates the link between political sophistication and electoral volatility. Showing that there is disagreement in the literature on whether switching party preferences is related to low or high levels of political sophistication, it is then argued that the aspect of timing is often overlooked. Given differences in the impact of campaign messages depending on levels of political sophistication, the moment at which volatility is measured can be expected to bias findings. The effect of timing on vote switching is investigated by means of the Short-term panel of the German Longitudinal Election Study, organized in the context of the 2009 German elections. Event history analysis techniques are used to investigate the hazard of switching vote intentions from one party to another. Results indicate that timing indeed matters, while by election day the lower sophisticated voters have switched intentions most, the higher politically sophisticated started the campaign with a higher hazard of vote switching.