Changing Voter Appeal

Abstract

This chapter assesses whether the innovation strategies of challenger parties are successful in terms of extending their voter base and generating more votes. Challenger parties innovate by mobilizing high appropriability issues that are difficult to handle for dominant parties because they risk splitting their rank and file. Challenger parties also aim to protect their innovation and first-mover advantage by discrediting rivals. This twofold approach based on policy and rhetoric is aimed at increasing electoral appeal and thus breaking the brand loyalty of voters to dominant parties. The chapter then considers two expectations which can be derived from this book's theory of political change. First, challenger parties that innovate want to attract new voters, and by doing so break the market power of dominant parties. Second, when choosing a challenger over a dominant party, voters should be voting on the basis of high appropriability issues and motivated by antiestablishment considerations. The chapter empirically tests these expectations by combining data for over 200 parties between 1950 and 2017 in 18 West European countries with survey data for over 18,000 individuals in 17 West European countries in 2014.