Spatial voting across electoral arenas and policy dimensions

This dissertation proposes a novel way to consistently model policy-based voting behavior across multiple electoral levels. Building on the multidimensional model of spatial competition, change in electoral turnout and party vote choice across elections may result from voters reweighing different policy dimension at different levels of government. An estimation strategy that implements the spatial model in the panel conditional logit fixed-effects framework and allows for the modeling of non-separable preferences is developed. This framework is brought to bear on the long-standing debate on the role of voter EU integration preferences in explaining differences in voting behavior between national-level and European Parliamentary elections. Leveraging a uniquely suited panel voter survey from the German state of Bavaria, evidence of voters recalibrating their policy priorities across electoral levels is established