Keep it Simple! German Voters’ Limited Competence to Evaluate Electoral Systems’ Functions

Abstract

Electoral systems are a fundamental feature of any democratic system, and the design of an electoral system can have a tremendous impact on party-, candidate-, and voter-behaviour. However, in order to use all features of an electoral system as intended, voters must have a clear understanding of how their electoral system actually works. While earlier studies have already shown that many German voters have limited knowledge about the characteristics of their electoral systems, we shift the focus to the more fundamental understanding of electoral systems’ objectives. Therefore, this paper addresses the question of how competent voters are in understanding and applying six core functions of electoral systems: (1) proportionality, (2) minority representation, (3) party system concentration, (4) personalisation, (5) legitimacy, and (6) comprehensibility. Based on an original representative survey of German citizens, we demonstrate that only a minority of the electorate is competent enough to capture these functions. We further demonstrate how education and political interest influence voters’ understanding of electoral systems. While the political logic of compromises in electoral reforms tends to create electoral systems of growing complexity, our findings strongly suggest policymakers must bear in mind voters’ limited resources and capabilities to fully understand electoral systems’ functions.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Surplus seats evolve when more district candidates of a party are successful than this party should get seats according to the ‘second votes’. Since such parties then staff more members of parliament than they should, the additional seats are called ‘surplus’. As of the 2013 elections, surplus seats are compensated by additional levelling seats for the other parties.

2 Illustrative cases are the U.S. and the U.K. While both countries are using plurality electoral systems, the parliamentary system of the U.K. knows programmatic and cohesive parties whereas the presidential system of the U.S. does not.

3 In our sample, 15.6% of our respondents indicated a low or very low level of political interest, 40.5% a moderate level, and 43.9% a high or very high level. The respective values of the representative GLES study are 18.6%, 44.2% and 37.2%. Our data, thus, reveals a slight overrepresentation of highly politically interested respondents only.

4 The findings regarding the subjects’ preferences on electoral system functions are presented in Jankowski, Linhart, and Tepe (2019).

5 The full regression table is provided in the appendix.

6 The regression results again can be found in the appendix.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Jankowski

Michael Jankowski is a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Oldenburg. His research interests include electoral systems, voting behavior and legislative studies. His publications have appeared, among others, in West European Politics, Party Politics, Electoral Studies and the Journal of European Public Policy.

Eric Linhart

Eric Linhart is Professor of Political Science at the Chemnitz University of Technology. His research interests include electoral systems, voting behavior and coalition theory. His publications have appeared, among others, in the European Political Science Review, the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties, Party Politics and West European Politics.

Markus Tepe

Markus Tepe is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oldenburg. His research interests include political decision making in comparative public policies, behavioral public administration, political sociology and social science research methods. His publications have appeared, among others, in the European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.