For the 2014 federal elections in Belgium the boundaries of the Brussels district were different from before. In the new district 15 seats were available, which meant a threshold of roughly 6.7% for winning a seat. The Flemish parties in Brussels could however only expect – all together – some 12% of the votes. It was highly unlikely that a Flemish party would win a seat and all votes for these parties would thus be lost votes. Flemish voters in Brussels were for the first time confronted with a real issue of strategic voting. The results of the federal and regional elections in Brussels are intriguing. Some parties scored better in the – hopeless – federal elections than in the safe regional elections, while for other parties the regional score was slightly better. This paper uses the MEDW survey in Brussels to investigate what happened at the individual voter level.
