Issues, Discontent, and Third-Party Voting: The Case of the Netherlands

Scholarly accounts of the dramatic breakthrough of the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the 2002\ud Dutch parliamentary election have mostly emphasized two factors behind the success of\ud that party. It has first been argued that the LPF brought a distinct issue profile to the\ud electoral arena, which made it attractive for voters holding similar policy views. The\ud second hypothesis, that feelings of political discontent also fuelled support for the LPF,\ud remains highly contested because of the possible endogeneity bias of cynicism attitudes.\ud We re-examine this question using survey data from the 1998-2002 panel of the Dutch\ud National Election Study. Our approach’s novelty is to estimate 2002’s vote choice using\ud indicators of individuals’ issue priorities and cynical attitudes as measured in the 1998\ud wave of the panel. The findings suggest that policy preferences and attitudes of discontent\ud both contributed to the LPF vote, thus providing support for both interpretations of the rise\ud of this party. These results are consistent with most existing work on “third” or minor party\ud voting showing that lack of confidence toward government and politics is fertile ground for\ud these party movements

What explains the dynamics of citizens’ satisfaction with democracy? An integrated framework for panel data

Literature on political support broadly offers three micro-level models: socio-economic status, democratic process evaluations, and political performance evaluations explain people's differences in satisfaction with democracy. While tests show that these explanations complement each other, we do not know how. We combine for the first time all three models into one common longitudinal framework by explicitly considering aspects of time. We argue that relatively stable factors, such as socio-economic status, only explain general levels, whereas more time-sensitive factors, such as evaluations, explain differences between citizens at specific points in time. The results of latent growth curve modelling applied to nine-wave panel data support our general hypothesis of a common longitudinal framework. These results also show that economic evaluations play a prominent role as do some (but not all) electoral results. The findings have theoretical and methodological implications, and they offer a new perspective on the meaning of ’satisfaction with democracy’

Issues, Discontent, and Third-Party Voting: The Case of the Netherlands

Scholarly accounts of the dramatic breakthrough of the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the 2002 Dutch parliamentary election have mostly emphasized two factors behind the success of that party. It has first been argued that the LPF brought a distinct issue profile to the electoral arena, which made it attractive for voters holding similar policy views. The second hypothesis, that feelings of political discontent also fuelled support for the LPF, remains highly contested because of the possible endogeneity bias of cynicism attitudes. We re-examine this question using survey data from the 1998-2002 panel of the Dutch National Election Study. Our approach’s novelty is to estimate 2002’s vote choice using indicators of individuals’ issue priorities and cynical attitudes as measured in the 1998 wave of the panel. The findings suggest that policy preferences and attitudes of discontent both contributed to the LPF vote, thus providing support for both interpretations of the rise of this party. These results are consistent with most existing work on “third” or minor party voting showing that lack of confidence toward government and politics is fertile ground for these party movements.Session 2: Political representation and legitimac

Reaching Hard-to-Survey Populations: Mode Choice and Mode Preference

This study assesses the effect of response-mode choices on response rates, and responsemode preferences of hard-to-survey populations: young adults, full-time workers, big city inhabitants, and non-Western immigrants. Using address-based sampling, a stratified sample of 3,496 households was selected. The first group of sample members was contacted face to face and could choose between a CAPI and web response mode. The second group, contacted by telephone, could choose between CATI and web. The third group, contacted by telephone, was randomly allocated to a response mode. Our address-based sampling technique was successful in reaching most of the hard-to-survey groups. Insufficient numbers of non- Western immigrants were reached; therefore this group was excluded from our analyses. In our mixed-effect models, no significant effects on the willingness to participate were found for mode choice. We found that full-time workers and young adults were significantly more likely to choose web over CAPI when contacted face to face