The Impact of Centre-Periphery Perceptions on Vote Choice in Local Elections in Norway

Local elections are often thought to be conceived by voters as second-order to first-order national elections. Voters do not turn out and when they do, they tend to use their local vote to send a signal of discontent to parties in national government. Research has shown that second-order election behaviour can be especially found in centralized unitary countries where sub-national governments have relatively few competences and where national identities are strong. In this paper we focus on the Norwegian local elections held in September 2019 which is a most likely case for second-order election effects. We fielded a questionnaire to a sample of around 1,200 respondents with questions about the motivations underlying vote choice in municipal (kommuner) and regional (fylker) elections. The results reveal that around 40 per cent of the respondents voted for a different party in local elections than the party they would have voted for in a national election if a national election would have been held. Among those vote switchers, a minority use their local vote to punish (or reward) national politicians. Most respondents used their local vote in a prospective manner, that is to make sure that local and regional interests are best represented in the coming years. In this paper we show that centre-periphery perceptions –i.e. the extent to which citizens think that central government should and does take the periphery into account in national policy—drive local vote choice but in different ways for municipal (kommuner) and regional (fylker) elections.