What does negative voting mean?

This study examines the nature of negative voting – the phenomenon in which a person declares to vote against rather than for a party – by investigating whether it is driven primarily by expressive or instrumental considerations. While expressive motivations may suggest that negative feelings are dominating politics, posing a problem for democracy, instrumental motivations may reflect rational voting decision-making to punish a party for its performance while in office or to prevent a certain party from winning, which is largely perceived as normatively desirable. The analysis uses as a case study the 2024 European Parliament elections conducted simultaneously across the EU. It uses originally collected post-election survey data from seven countries (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland) and a new survey instrument. The results show that negative voting has a low prevalence and contains both instrumental and expressive components, but it is generally more instrumental than expressive compared to positive voting. Therefore, some concerns about the detrimental nature of negative voting may be exaggerated. By shedding light on the nature of negative voting, this study contributes to our understanding of the implications of this form of voting behavior for contemporary democracies.