¹ A recent exception is Duch, Raymond M., May, Jeff and Armstrong, David A. II, ‘Coalition-Directed Voting in Multi-Party Democracies’, American Political Science Review, 104 (2010), 698–719CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² See, for example, Blais, André, Aldrich, John H., Indridason, Indridi and Levine, Renan, ‘Do Voters Vote for Government Coalitions? Testing Downs’ Pessimistic Conclusion’, Party Politics, 12 (2006), 691–705CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meffert, Michael F. and Gschwend, Thomas, ‘Strategic Voting under Proportional Representation and Coalition Governments: A Laboratory Experiment’ (working paper, 2009)Google Scholar, and detailed discussion below.

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⁴ E.g., Riker, William H., ‘The Two-Party System and Duverger's Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science’, American Political Science Review, 76 (1982), 753–766CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ E.g., Blais, André, Nadeau, Richard, Gidengil, Elisabeth and Nevitte, Neil, ‘Measuring Strategic Voting in Multiparty Plurality Elections’, Electoral Studies, 20 (2001), 343–352CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alvarez, Michael R. and Nagler, Jonathan, ‘A New Approach to Modelling Strategic Voting in Multiparty Elections’, British Journal of Political Science, 30 (2000), 57–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Of course, the mere idea of strategic voting assumes away the question of tuning out under a rational framework. The voter behaves as if she is pivotal.

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⁸ Chhibber, Pradeep and Kollman, Ken, The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Chhibber, Pradeep and Kollman, Ken, ‘Party Aggregation and the Number of Parties in India and the United States’, American Political Science Review, 92 (1998), 329–342CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹¹ Cox, Gary W., Making Votes Count (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The district magnitude is the number of seats per district.

¹² Cox, , Making Votes Count, p. 100Google Scholar. An additional potential reason is that as the number of seats per district increases, voters have less of an incentive to vote strategically, since, other things being equal, the effective threshold for parliamentary entry is lowered, and other than in the case of very small parties, the threshold can be more easily passed.

¹³ Duch et al., ‘Coalition-Directed Voting in Multi-Party Democracies’.

¹⁴ An alternative operationalization is a thermometer scale, as used by Gschwend, Thomas, ‘District Magnitude and the Comparative Study of Strategic Voting’, in Hans-Dieter Klingerman, ed., The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 289–307Google Scholar.

¹⁵ The magnitude of the median legislator's district is that in which half of the legislators are elected in smaller-magnitude districts and half in larger-magnitude districts. Following Neto, Amorim and Cox, ‘Electoral Institutions, Cleavage Structures, and the Number of Parties’, p. 157Google Scholar, this is considered a standard central tendency measure of electoral penetrability for new parties.

¹⁶ CSES. 2003. CSES Module 1, 1996–2001 (August 4, 2003 Version). Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan [producer and distributor]. CSES. 2007. CSES Module 2, 2001–2005 (June 27, 2006 Version). Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan [producer and distributor] (both available at www.cses.org).

¹⁷ I thank Matias Bargsted for letting me use the proximity rate figures reported on the vertical axis that were originally calculated for our joint work: Bargsted, Matias A. and Kedar, Orit, ‘Duvergerian-Targeted Coalition Voting: How Expectations Affect Voter Choice under Proportional Representation’, American Journal of Political Science, 53 (2009), 307–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ In a survey of thirty-two country/elections, Hobolt, Sara B. and Karp, Jeffrey A., ‘Voters and Coalition Governments’, Electoral Studies, 29 (2010), 299–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar, find that an average of 15–20 per cent support a party different from the one they prefer the most. Although suggesting higher rates of sincere voting, this figure too indicates that many are pulled away from their favourite party.

¹⁹ These findings are consistent with those reported by Abramson, Paul R., Aldrich, John H., Blais, André, Diamond, Matthew, Diskin, Abraham, Indridason, Indridi, Lee, Daniel and Levine, Renan, ‘Comparing Strategic Voting under FPTP and PR’, Comparative Political Studies, 43 (2010), 63–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Comparing vote intentions under majoritarian and proportional democracy in seven election/countries, the authors conclude that at least as many voters support their non-favourite party in the latter as in the former.

²⁰ Of course, in some cases parties announce pre-electoral coalitions (see Golder, Sona N., ‘Pre-electoral Coalition Formation in Parliamentary Democracies’, British Journal of Political Science, 36 (2006), 193–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

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²² Bowler, Shaun, Karp, Jeffrey A. and Donovan, Todd, ‘Strategic Coalition Voting: Evidence from New Zealand’, Electoral Studies, 29 (2010), 350–357CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁴ In ‘Making a Difference?’ Vowles measures authoritarianism using two survey items: ‘A few strong leaders could make this country better than all the laws and talk’, and ‘What young people need most is strict discipline from their parents’.

²⁵ Blais et al., ‘Do Voters Vote For Government Coalitions?’.

²⁶ Blais et al. , ‘Do Voters Vote for Government Coalitions?’ p. 703Google Scholar.

²⁷ Bowler et al., ‘Strategic Coalition Voting’.

²⁸ Irwin, Galen A. and van Holsteyn, Joop J.M., ‘They Say It Can't Be Done? Strategic Voting in Multi-Party Proportional Systems: The Case of The Netherlands’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, 2003)Google Scholar.

²⁹ Meffert, Michael F. and Gschwend, Thomas, ‘Strategic Coalition Voting: Evidence from Austria’, Electoral Studies, Vol. 29 (2011), 339–349CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ See Blais, André and Carty, R. K., ‘The Psychological Impact of Electoral Laws: Measuring Duverger's Elusive Factor’, British Journal of Political Science, 21 (1991), 79–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benoit, Kenneth, ‘Duverger's Law and the Study of Electoral Systems’, French Politics, 4 (2006), 69–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁴ Evans, Geoffrey and Heath, Anthony, ‘A Tactical Error in the Analysis of Tactical Voting: A Response to Niemi, Heath, and Franklin’, British Journal of Political Science, 23 (1993), 131–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Niemi, Richard G., Whitten, Guy and Franklin, Mark N., ‘People Who Live in Glass Houses: A Response to Evans and Heath's Critique of Our Note on Tactical Voting’, British Journal of Political Science, 23 (1993), 549–553CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Franklin, Mark N., Niemi, Richard G. and Whitten, Guy, ‘The Two Faces of Tactical Voting’, British Journal of Political Science, 24 (1994), 549–557CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heath, Anthony and Evans, Geoffrey, ‘Tactical Voting: Concepts, Measurement, and Findings’, British Journal of Political Science, 24 (1994), 557–561CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁷ Alvarez and Nagler, ‘A New Approach to Modelling Strategic Voting in Multiparty Elections’, Table 1. Studies reviewed examine British general elections, Canadian general elections and US primaries.

³⁸ Fisher, Stephen D. and Curtice, John, ‘Tactical Unwind? Changes in Party Preference Structure and Tactical Voting in Britain between 2001 and 2005’, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties, 16 (2006), 55–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁴¹ Gschwend, Thomas, ‘Ticket-Splitting and Strategic Voting under Mixed Electoral Rules: Evidence from Germany’, European Journal of Political Research, 46 (2007), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 5.

⁴² Wawrick, Paul V. and Druckman, James N., ‘The Portfolio Allocation Paradox: Investigation into the Nature of a Very Strong but Puzzling Relationship’, European Journal of Political Research, 45 (2006), 635–665CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ Bowler et al., ‘Strategic Coalition Voting’.

⁴⁴ Bargsted and Kedar, ‘Duvergerian-Targeted Coalition Voting’.

⁴⁵ For a model of voters concerned with margin of victory, see Llavador, Humberto, ‘Voting with Preferences over Margins of Victory’, Mathematical Social Sciences, 56 (2008), 355–365CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶ Michael F. Meffert and Thomas Gschwend, ‘Strategic Coalition Voting’.

⁴⁷ Gschwend, ‘Ticket-Splitting and Strategic Voting under Mixed Electoral Rules’.

⁴⁸ Rosema, Martin, ‘Strategic and Semi-strategic Voting under Different Electoral Systems’ (paper prepared for delivery at the annual Meeting of the Dutch Political Science Organization, Antwerp, 2004)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ A related question is whether parties react to these strategies. In a study of a time-series cross-section of pre-electoral coalitions in Western Europe, Sona N. Golder tests the hypothesis that pre-electoral coalitions are formed to signal to voters otherwise in a state of uncertainty the potential government that will form after the election if the party wins. She finds no support for this hypothesis: a greater number of parties (and usually, hence, greater uncertainty) is not correlated with announcing a pre-electoral coalition, but notes that her findings should be taken as tentative since the hypothesis has more than one version ( Golder, Sona N., ‘Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Comparative Perspective: A Test of Existing Hypotheses’, Electoral Studies, 24 (2005), 643–663CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

⁵⁰ The effect can be direct, indirect or contingent on a third variable. See the typology of effects proposed by Dalton, Russell J. and Anderson, Christopher J., ‘Citizens, Context, and Choice’, in Russell J. Dalton and Christopher J. Anderson, eds, Citizens, Context, and Choice: How Context Shapes Citizens’ Electoral Choices (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), pp. 3–30Google Scholar.

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⁵⁵ Strøm, Minority Government and Majority Rule, pp. 207–209Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Strøm, Minority Government and Majority Rule, p. 58Google Scholar.

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⁶⁰ Duch et al., ‘Strategic Voting in Post-Communist democracy?’.

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⁶⁴ Aldrich et al., ‘Coalition Considerations and the Vote’.

⁶⁵ Bargsted and Kedar, ‘Duvergerian-Targeted Coalition Voting’.