The decision to stay loyal or defect: The impact of polarization on vote switching

This thesis examines the effects of individuals’ policy evaluations on their propensity to switch parties between two consecutive elections as conditional on individuals’ varying levels of affective polarization by employing a cross-sectional dataset. The theoretical framework builds upon policy and non-policy related voting theories, including but not limited to partisan identification. Albeit varying extents, the findings suggest that the effect of policy evaluations on the probability of switching votes decreases as affective polarization increases. The analyses present empirical support for the main hypothesis for policy domains such as economy, health, and business and industry, thus presenting a counter-argument towards issue voting and economic voting theories. Another important finding of this thesis is the difference in probabilities of vote switching between lowly and highly polarized systems. Furthermore, due to its polarized party and electoral politics, Turkish voting behavior in the June 2015 elections presents itself as an intriguing puzzle and a case study for this research. The empirical analyses suggest that even though the deteriorating economic conditions were one of the main determinants of the elections, their effect on vote switching are alleviated by high and increasing levels of affective polarization the country. Lastly, empirical evidence is provided for the effect of individuals’ policy evaluations on their vote choices conditionally on varying levels of affective polarizatio