SALIENCE MATTERS Analyzing the Impact of Social Democratic Parties' Approaches to the Second Dimension on Vote Share in Western Europe

Abstract

This thesis contributes to the study of the electoral strategy of social democratic parties during a period of decreasing vote shares. I conduct quantitative analysis to investigate the relative impact of issue salience and spatial positioning on the sociocultural—GALTAN dimension for voting, creating the first study to look at the impact of second dimension saliency on social democratic vote shares. The paper takes a top-down approach, using party positioning data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey and manifesto data from MARPOR to examine parties’ campaign strategies and their impact on vote share. Findings indicate that GAL positioning on the second dimension boosts vote shares for social democrats while increased salience for second dimensiol issues results in a decline of vote shares. Ultimately, the interaction of GAL positioning with low salience may be a vote-maximizing strategy for social democratic parties. These findings indicate that social democrats need to take the threat of losing voters to GAL parties seriously, while simultaneously preventing alienation of social democrat voters that hold more moderate or conservative positions on the second dimension. Social democrats must perform a balancing act to hold onto the diverse coalition of voters they have developed over the 20th century.