The personal vote in preferential list PR: incumbency and voters’ decision-making

A large literature examines the personal vote-seeking behaviour of politicians who strive for election under preferential list PR. On the other hand, little is known about how voters decide which specific candidate from a party list to support. It is clear that, like in single-member district systems, incumbent MPs enjoy an electoral advantage over outsiders also in list systems which allow for intra-party choice of candidates. This incumbency effect, however, may arise from fundamentally different mechanisms. Some voters may use incumbency status simply as a low-level cue which guides their candidate choice. Other voters may choose incumbents based on high levels of information, for instance as a result from MPs’ behaviour in parliament or during the campaign. Using innovative survey questions from the 2014 PartiRep election study conducted in Belgium, we analyze how incumbency enters voters’ decision-making calculus when choosing between candidates in a flexible list system. The results contribute to a better understanding of both voters’ candidate choice and its implications for the personal vote-seeking behaviour of MPs.