Assessing Voters’ Perceptions of Candidate Electability in preferential List-PR Systems: Evidence from Local Elections in Belgium

Preferential list-PR systems require voters to choose among multiple co-partisan candidates, a task that often relies on cognitive shortcuts such as anticipating candidates’ likelihood of being elected. While not all voters behave strategically, the ability to assess electability is a prerequisite for such voting behaviour. Voters cannot meaningfully anticipate electoral alternatives – strategically or otherwise – without some ability to distinguish strong from weak contenders. It is therefore crucial to explore voters’ assessment of candidates’ electability. This article precisely studies how voters handle this complex task in Preferential list-PR systems. We rely on an original methodology using mock ballot data from the 2018 Belgian exit poll. First, we analyze the type of candidates that appear more eligible to voters. Second, we estimate models using explanatory factors at voter-level, candidate-level, party lists-level, and district-level to assess voters’ (in)ability to predict candidates’ electoral fate. Our findings suggest that voters have a limited ability to estimate a candidate’s electability. Voters’ ability is, however, enhanced by their political capital (education and political interest), the ballot position of the candidate, and the list’s party magnitude. In a context of personalization of politics, these findings contribute to the literature on strategic voting beyond plurality systems, as well as on the democratic consequences of voters’ electoral abilities.