The aim of this article is to estimate empirically voters‘ reaction functions with regard to parties‘ position-taking on issues . Using a special feature of conditional logit and probit models, i.e the possibility of specifying alternative-specific coefficients, we consider both abstention and parties as discrete behaviorally relevant alternatives in the electoral choice set. Following early contributions in the spatial theory framework, we expect policy alienation and indifference to induce abstention. We assume voters to trade-off directly alienation against issue distances in their calculus. Additionally, we discuss problems of operationalizing indifference in multi-party systems with multiple tickets and coalition governments. In our empirical model, we control also for non-policy factors. Application cases are German parliamentary elections in the period 1987-2009 allowing us to compare substitution patterns for changing sets of alternatives and for campaign specificities.
