Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/218839 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Electoral Studies [ISSN:] 1873-6890 [Volume:] 65 [Article No.:] 102126 [Publisher:] Elsevier [Place:] Amsterdam [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] --
Publisher: 
Elsevier, Amsterdam
Abstract: 
Political parties strive for maximizing their vote shares. One way to achieve this goal is to attract voters from competitors. A precondition for strategies aiming at attracting these voters is that parties perceive their voter potentials among their rivals' electorates correctly. Yet, hardly anything is known about such perceptions. To fill this gap, we develop analogue measures of a party's perceived and its actual voter potential for each competitor in a party system. Combining elite and mass surveys conducted in Germany, we show that perceived and actual voter potentials depend on spatial considerations but also that not all parties are able to correctly evaluate their potentials. These deviations can be traced back to differences in the perceived placement of political actors between elites and citizens. This supports the spatial logic of party competition but it also points to potential pitfalls for strategic behavior of political parties.
Subjects: 
spatial models
party competition
voter potentials
parties' perceptions
Published Version’s DOI: 
Creative Commons License: 
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Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Accepted Manuscript (Postprint)

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