Preference voting in proportional representation systems and political trust

This study examines the impact of electoral systems on political trust. We argue that trust in parliament, political parties, and politicians is higher in proportional representation systems with intraparty preference voting. First, proportional electoral rules promote inclusiveness and representativeness. Second, candidate voting fosters closer links between citizens and individual politicians. Our strategy is to pool the data from 156 individual-level surveys in 29 countries across seven waves of the European Social Survey (EES) collected between 2002 and 2015. Hierarchical multilevel models show that political trust is highest in proportional systems with preference voting (open and semi-open lists) and lower in electoral systems with closed lists in multi-member districts and single-member districts. The study also accounts for the potential impact of macro-level political corruption, which has been linked to ballot structure in past research. When controlling for individual-level variables such as satisfaction with the economy and social trust, political corruption becomes a weak or even insignificant predictor. The positive effects of open and semi-open list PR systems remain significant with the inclusion of individual-level and contextual controls.