In recent years, list systems of proportional representation around the world have undergone important electoral reforms. Traditional political parties have endorsed these reforms, thinking they would strengthen their positions in the electoral struggle against new contending parties. Meanwhile, scholars have noted that these plans might backfire and enhance the position of individual candidates to the detriment of a given party as a whole. Yet the idea that these type of electoral reforms increase personal vote seeking behaviour has not been tested thoroughly. Specifically, it is unclear to what extent citizens’ preferential votes are motivated by individual candidate attributes as opposed to party allegiance. Do electoral reforms enhance the influence of candidate-based attributes on voter preferences, thus diminishing the relative influence of party-based attributes such as ballot position? In recent longitudinal research based on the Belgian local elections of 2000, 2006 and 2012 we have established that while voters may be more inclined to vote for individual candidates, they are no less relying on partisan clues such as the ballot position. However, the research only used a supply side perspective combining population data on individual candidate characteristics with the individual election results. In this follow-up study we will link the supply-side perspective with a demand-side approach using voter survey results (including mock ballot data) of the 2012 local elections to get a reliable impression of the motives underlying their preferential voting behaviour. First analyses indicate that subjective voting motivations are often not entirely paralleled by the actual preferential voting behaviour. In other words, voters are like consumers in a supermarket. They adore an extensive assortment and think they are carefully evaluating their individual attributes, but ultimately they often end up buying the same attractively displayed ‘top shelf’ product, the candidate heading the list.
