All estimates of party system change rely on the coding of parties as old or new. However, such dichotomous coding is insensitive to links between new and previously existing parties or internal change in old parties. We look at an important but understudied indicator of internal party change – the turnover of electoral candidates. The turnover is analysed in 50 elections in Central and Eastern Europe – a region with high levels of such forms of party change. We contrast the levels of candidate turnover to measures of volatility and identify elections with unusually high/low candidate turnover given the level of volatility. We also identify cases of: (a) new parties that are only moderately novel, (b) old parties undergoing a significant internal change and (c) parties that were neither old nor new. The last category of partially novel parties pose most problems for estimating party system change.
