Do Citizens Lead or do they Follow when the Candidate has No Party? Assessing the Relationship between Policy Preferences and Vote Choice in the 2017 French Election

Recent work by Lenz has shown that citizens frequently adapt their policy preferences to their vote choice rather than the reverse. However, it is not clear whether this finding simply reflects citizens' tendency to vote for the party with which they identify and to adopt its positions or whether citizens rationalize their vote choice by adapting their preferred candidate's position. We leverage the unique context of the 2017 French presidential election in which Emmanuel Macro won the presidency without being the candidate of an established party. We use the 18-wave French National Election Study panel survey, to test the influence of all issue preferences on vote choice as well as the influence of vote choice on policy preferences. If citizens rationalize their candidate preferences, we expect them to adjust their policy preferences to the positions expressed by their preferred candidate regardless of party identification.