Winning (or Losing) with Ambiguity: The Conditional Electoral Effects of Position Blurring

The previous literature on position blurring finds or implies different electoral effects of position blurring: while some suggest a positive effect (e.g., Rovny and Edwards 2012; Somer-Topcu 2015), others support a negative effect (e.g., Shepsle 1972; Enelow and Hinich 1981; Ferrara and Weishaupt 2004). As an explanation of these conflicting findings, we suggest that the electoral effect of position blurring depends on the dimensionality of an issue: while political parties lose votes by presenting a vague position on their first-dimensional issue, they gain votes by dosing so on their secondary dimensional issue. Using diverse rounds of data on party position (the Chapel Hill Expert Survey on party position 1999, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014), survey data (the European Social Survey rounds 1-7), and manifesto data, we find that political parties gain votes by blurring their position on immigration 1) when the parties do not put great salience on the immigration issue or 2) when party supporters are divided on the issue. In contrast, political parties lose votes by blurring their position on immigration 1) when the parties put great salience on the immigration issue or 2) when party supporters hold homogenous stances on the issue. However, position blurring on economy and the natural environment issues do not have any electoral effect. The result explains why the previous literature on position blurring reaches different conclusions: while studies that suggest the negative electoral effect of position blurring are mostly based on one-dimensional party competition in American politics, those that imply the positive effect of position blurring are based on multi-dimensional party competition in Western European politics. The result also implies that position blurring can be strategically utilized by political parties particularly regarding their secondary dimensional issues though such a party behavior is normatively criticized to violate the responsible party model.