Does ambiguity help or hinder parties during the campaign, and when in office? A survey experiment

Party ambiguity is the extent to which parties avoid taking clear issue positions. Recent scholarly work investigates how voters react to various manifestations of ambiguity, with most attention going to strategies of vagueness—speaking only in generalities that lack precision—and inconsistency—giving inconsistent cues as to the ‘real’ party position (Lefevere, 2023; Nasr, 2022). We build on this research and tackle two questions: first, to what extent do voters like or dislike parties that convey vague and/or inconsistent positions? Second, do they change their opinion once a party has to clarify its position when in office? We present data from a novel survey experiment in which respondents are asked to evaluate parties whose issue positions have systematically varying levels of inconsistency and vagueness, on four different issues. After evaluating the party, respondents are then asked to update their evaluation once the party reveals its true position through enacting precise policy. Our study addresses important lacunae in the literature: first, our study theorizes and tests the combined and interactive effects of two strategies of ambiguity (inconsistency and vagueness). Prior research has tended to study either strategy in isolation, but in real-life campaigns parties often mix and match ambiguous strategies. Second, we hypothesize the post-electoral effect of ambiguity. During the campaign, ambiguity may hurt parties electorally amongst risk-averse voters. However, once in office parties must enact necessarily precise policy. We suggest ambiguity may shield a party from a post-electoral backlash: the party did not commit to clear positions, so voters may be more forgiving of unpopular policy. Third, our design incorporates four policy issues. This allows us to assert the robustness of our findings across multiple issues. In contrast, prior work often assesses ambiguity on only a single issue (e.g. Nasr, 2022).