Re-assessing the dissatisfied volatile voter Political support as cause and consequence of electoral volatility

This dissertation investigates the causal relations between electoral volatility and forms of political support. In particular, it identifies and addresses four shortcomings in the literature.
First, it is seldom acknowledged nor empirically scrutinized that the effects of support on volatility may have a dynamic component which varies over time. Second, existing studies may have incorrectly assumed that such effects exist coherently among voters for all political parties. Third, the effects of different subtypes of support on vote switching may be less similar than commonly assumed once such effect are simultaneously assessed. And fourth, it has not been considered that volatility may not only result from political support, but may also be one of its causes.
This book empirically demonstrates that dynamic drops in support (critical citizens) stimulate vote switching independently from the impact of low base levels of support (dissatisfied citizens). It also demonstrates that political dissatisfaction stabilizes the vote of populist-party voters. Next, the effects of generalized/diffuse types of support on vote switching are shown to shift to positive effects when controlled for specific support. Finally, the book shows that volatile election outcomes have the capacity to increasingly restore political support over the course of elections.
Altogether, this book suggests that volatility more positively impacts the well-functioning of democracies than is commonly assumed by democratic pessimists.