Can Voters in Proportional Multi-Party Systems act Strategically? Challenging the Concept of Strategic Voting using Evidence from Exit-Poll Data at the 2012 Belgian Municipal Elections

One of the central questions in political science remains why people vote the way they do. A widely applied method to assess voter intention is the post-election survey, despite its flaws. Not only does the timing – reporting voting behaviour weeks after going to the ballot – involve the risk of people misremembering their choice, the fact that the results of the election are already known before questionnaires reach respondents implies the possibility of influence. To avoid this interference, an interuniversity team of researchers working on the PartiRep II project collaborated on the – to our knowledge – first ever representative exit poll carried out in Belgium. Respondents thus had every occasion to explain the reasoning behind their vote immediately after the act. The top-of-mind answers from the exit poll offer scholars a singular opportunity to research voter intention and strategic voting. The exit poll administered at the 2012 Belgian municipal elections permits us to elaborate on the concept of strategic voting so it can be applied in the context of proportional electoral systems, too. By asking respondents why they did not vote for their second-preferred party list, we extend the meaning of strategic voting to include more than an attempt to keep the least-preferred party/candidate from office. Furthermore, our data was compiled using open-ended questions, enabling voters to voice their own motivations for declining/deciding to vote for their second preferences. This research strategy aims to uncover voter intention by exploring negative motivations. We argue that this strategy is an apt one in a political climate characterised by on-going processes of de-alignment.