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Electoral Cycle Fluctuations In Partisanship: Global Evidence From Eighty-Six Countries, Kristin Michelitch, Stephen Utych

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Elections are defining elements of democracy but occur infrequently. Given that elections evoke mass mobilization, we expect citizen attachments to political parties to wax during election season and wane in between. By leveraging data from 86 countries across the globe to investigate the effect of the electoral cycle on partisanship, we find that the predicted probability of being close to a political party rises 6 percentage points from cycle midpoint to an election—an effect rivaling traditional key determinants of partisanship. Further, fluctuations are larger where the persistence of party presence throughout the cycle is weaker and socioeconomic development is lower. …