Does Party Support Explain Voting Behavior?

Examining the conditional effects of partisanship through survey experiments

Abstract

This article examines the influence of party support on voting behavior on the basis of survey experiments conducted in Japan. Contrary to previous studies arguing that party support has a strong influence on voting behavior, this paper indicates that the causal effect of party support on voting behavior is not strong. The results of three survey experiments in Osaka City and the Kansai area demonstrate the following findings. First, party labels may not be as important as heuristics for a large number of votes in Japan. Second, supporters of a specific political party do not always vote for a candidate supported by their own party. Particularly, supporters of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party frequently voted for candidates belonging to other political parties. These findings imply that the influence of party support is not as strong as was mentioned in previous studies.