Foreign Policy Preferences and Vote Choice Under Semi-Presidentialism: Case of 2019 Lithuanian Presidential Elections

This paper analyses how the voters’ foreign policy preferences influence the candidate choice in direct presidential elections under a semi-presidential system. Models that aim to explain the popularity and (re)election of presidents usually stress the economy. However, under a semi-presidential system the government shares power with the president and her accountability for the economic policy could be limited. Even less so, if she is non-partisan or under the periods of cohabitation. On the other hand, directly elected president, as the Commander-in-Chief and Head of the State, could be held accountable for the foreign policy. In lieu of economic voting (if accountability for the economy is not clear), foreign policy-related preferences may influence the vote choice in the presidential elections. Lithuania is a convenient case to test this hypothesis, as Constitution clearly specifies that president shall decide the basic questions of foreign policy and conducts foreign policy together with the government. Moreover, presidents in Lithuania are usually non-partisan: this lowers the expectation that they will be held accountable for the economy (that is considered as domain of the government) or that the voters will relate candidates to specific economic policies (ideology). Paper analyses these considerations using the data from the 2019 post-electoral Lithuanian survey and employing individual-level logistic regression analysis, while controlling for the other possible explanations of electoral behavior in the presidential elections. I find evidence that foreign-policy considerations, especially related to Russia, are indeed strongly correlated with the vote choice.