Optimal Electoral Strategies for Socialist Parties

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Abstract
A strategic dilemma confronts social democratic parties in postindustrial politics: whether to depend on the working class or on the middle class for electoral support. If a social democratic party becomes more heterogeneous (argue working-class strategists) or more homogeneous (argue the middle-class strategists) in class support, then it will also become more electorally successful. The controversy is addressed in two ways. First, a formal model of vote maximization offers a more complete explication of the strategic tradeoffs confronting party leaders than is offered by either the working-class or the middle-class strategists. Second, the alternative electoral strategies are also probed using aggregated survey data on social class and party fortunes. Data come from 41 elections in the postwar era contested by five social democratic parties. Findings come from regressing the total, working-class, and middle-class votes for each party on (lagged) Rose and Urwin's indexes of social cohesion of party alignments and on (lagged) Alford's indexes of class voting. Analytical results and empirical findings are interpreted in terms of their implications for party leaders.