Countries with mixed-member electoral systems elect their members of parliament in two different tiers: one majoritarian and one proportional. Since in most of these democracies citizens have two votes, it is theoretically possible to support two different political options at the same time and, hence, to cast a split-ticket vote. Since Campbell and Miller examined this type of voting behaviour for the first time in 1957, the literature has resorted to different factors to explain the occurrence of this phenomenon. By using data from the first five waves of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, this paper assesses whether nominal MPs who belong to the incumbent party or parties at the national level are not electorally blamed by the bad performance of the national government and the deterioration of the state of the economy of the country. Results show that voters punish national incumbents at both tiers of the mixed-member electoral system, even though the punishment is comparatively stronger in the list than in the nominal vote generating, as a consequence, incentives to cast a split-ticket vote. The paper also assesses the potential existence of asymmetries between good and bad economic times and across different types of mixed-member electoral systems.
