Mind the Gap! Political Sophistication and the Ideological Distance of Party Switching

Although scholars have investigated the characteristics of volatile voters ever since the _rst voter surveys were carried out, what precise impact political sophistication has on volatility is still debated. The increase in volatility over the past decades has made this issue even more relevant. This leads to the question whether the growing unpredictability of elections is mostly driven by sophisticated voters making well-considered choices or whether the balance of power is in hands of unsophisticated 'oating voters'. Given that several scholars have argued that despite the increase in volatility, switching is still mostly con_ned to changes to ideologically close parties, we suggest to directly take into account the distance bridged by volatile voters when investigating the link between political sophistication and volatility. Making use of CSES-data we investigate the ideological distance voters bridge from one election to another in a broad sample of recent parliamentary elections worldwide. Results indicate that voters with an intermediate level of political knowledge are most likely to switch overall. When taking into account the ideological distance of party switching, however, the con_ning impact of political knowledge on the vote choices made is clearly dominant.status: publishe