How do Voters want to be Represented by their Parties? Testing the Promise-Keeping Assumption

How should political elites make representative democracy work? Dominant democracy models assume that voters want parties to fulfil the promises of their election campaigns and that this is especially true for the party a voter supports. The congruence between voters’ policy preferences, party programs, and party behavior is argued to ensure policy responsiveness and the meaningfulness of elections. Whether voters agree with these assumptions, however, remains largely unclear. Thus, the yardstick against which elites are judged might differ between voters and political scientists. This article is one of the first empirical studies to investigate voter preferences regarding party behavior (instead of focusing on MPs). It pits three ideal-type party representative styles against each other: promise keeping, focus on public opinion, and seeking the common good. Furthermore, it tests whether voters prefer their party – over other parties – to keep their promises. Using innovative conjoint survey experiments in Austria and Australia, this study finds that, generally, voters care least about parties keeping their promises and their preferences are unaffected by their party support. These results not only challenge the primacy of promise keeping, but also the assumed ubiquitous party effect.