Why Do They Take Longer to Make up Their Mind? A Comparative Study on Late Deciding Voters in Western Democracies
Over the last years, the phenomenon of voter's indecision has undoubtedly become one of the most salient topics in the media coverage of election campaigns, but also one of the main fields of interest for students of voting behaviour (Cautres Jadot, 2009) In many Western democracies, opinion polls conducted during the weeks preceding an election often reveal that a noteworthy proportion of respondents are uncertain about how they will vote and even about whether or not they will vote, which makes election outcomes highly unpredictable. There is increasing evidence that vote intentions nowadays crystallize substantially later than they did some decades ago (Dalton et al. 2000; Lachat, 2007; McAllister, 2002) Indeed, less and less citizens know before the start of the election campaign which party they are going to vote for. A growing segment of the electorate enters the campaign without a firm vote intention and remains undecided until the last weeks before the election or even until Election Day itself.