Tactical voting: A study of voters' tactical considerations in the 2010 Swedish general election

Abstract

Most studies on tactical voting in proportional representation system focus on voting to help a party pass the threshold to the parliament. This study extends and develops the definition of tactical voting. The theoretical starting point is the rational choice theory of Anthony Downs (1957), who discusses voters’ strategic considerations in elections. From Downs’s perspective the rational voter considers the governmental consequences of voting. Downs distinguishes general rational voting, oriented towards the next-coming formation of government, from future oriented rational voting. This distinction is developed in the study, and tested on a contemporary electoral context. The specific case investigated is the 2010 Swedish general election. Tactical voting is defined as voting where party tactical considerations have decided vote choice. Among Swedish voters seven variants of tactical voting are identified. Five of these are short term: impact-voting, government-voting, relationship-voting, big party-voting and pass-the-threshold-voting, whereas two types are future oriented: signaling-voting and diversity-voting. In an explanatory analysis tactical voting is found to be related to hesitation about what party to choose and to young age.