Voting for Parties or for Candidates: Do Electoral Institutions Make a Difference?

In this paper, I analyze the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) data to explore the impact of electoral institutions on voting behavior.  In particular, I analyze the elections in countries where two electoral systems coexist and, therefore, where we can more clearly observe whether the effect of the different electoral systems while keeping everything else constant. Analyzing elections in the late nineties in Germany, Hungary, New Zealand, and Japan, I find that, as compared to multi-member district PR elections with closed party lists, single-member district FPTP elections generally: (a) increase the probability to vote for a party other than one's own in all countries other than in Germany (which politics are known for being heavily party-oriented), (b) increase the probability of casting a strategic vote in all countries other than in Hungary (which was a relatively new democracy at the time), and (c) increase the probability of casting a candidate-centered vote in countries that do not link the two electoral tiers together in a system of compensatory seats (i.e, Hungary and Japan), but decrease it in countries where they do linked their tiers and, as a result, the distribution of the lower house seats is almost fully determined by the PR vote (i.e. Germany and New Zealand).