Reform to Perform? Electoral Effects of Programmatic Change Among Mainstream Parties in Combination With a New Party Leader

One requirement for spatial election models to succeed is that voters are knowledgeable and can assess the parties’ programmatic stances (and changes therein) correctly. Studies find, however, that this requirement is only met to a limited extent. Instead, voters rely on certain cues to evaluate parties and their (changed) policy stances. Recent research shows that a new party leader can act as a clear heuristic for voters to correctly assess (changes in) party positioning. Moreover, along with a new party leader, the credibility of such policy shifts increases and these shifts are more noticeable to voters. Hence, we argue in this article that the electoral effects of programmatic shifts interact with the electoral effects of party leadership changes. To test this hypothesis, we conduct a multiple regression analysis investigating the potential electoral consequences of a change in programmatic stances on the Left–Right and GAL/TAN cleavage, a change in party leadership, and combinations of the two across 10 established democracies in 33 mainstream parties during a period of over 30 years. In contrast to our expectation, we do not find any evidence supporting the idea that combining programmatic reforms with a change in party leadership is rewarded at the ballot box.