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The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of candidates on voting behaviour in the regional elections of 2007 and 2011 in a number of Spanish regions (Autonomous Communities) included in the scope of the so-called 'dominant model of competition.' These are characterised by the total predominance of Spain-wide parties—and absence of any relevant nationalist/regionalist parties—in all electoral contests: Castile and León, Castile-La Mancha, Madrid region, Valencia region, Extremadura, La Rioja and Murcia region. Electoral research in Spain has focused mainly on the strong weight of ideology and party identifi cation in terms of voting behaviour, whereas the impact of the regional candidates themselves has not been analysed in so much detail. Using a series of logistic regressions, this study shows that approving of the regional leader is indeed one of the most signifi cant factors regarding voting decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes economic voting in decentralized contexts. The existence of several arenas of political competition allows for the appearance of vertical electoral contamination processes, implying that voters do not evaluate the performance of national and regional governments independently. Using the case of Spain in the period 1982-2008, it is demonstrated that this electoral contamination spreads from the national arena to the regional one, and not the other way round. However, electoral contamination tends to diminish as the process of decentralization takes place over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the way in which voting decision combines factors regarding government performance and the representative nature of the rulers. We have selected four Spanish regions with different degrees of nationalism and different parties at autonomous regional and central government levels. Voters make decisions in a two-dimensional space (ideology and nationalism). We calculate the relative importance of each dimension and show that ideology affects all voters equally, whereas the nationalist dimension only affects nationalists. Using conditional logit estimation techniques, we analyse a 1992 survey of carried out by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, which shows us that (i) there is a coat-tail voting effect, so that the party in power is rewarded or punished at autonomous regional level, (ii) nationalist voters are more indulgent than non nationalist voters when they have a negative opinion of the regional government performance, and (iii) the more exclusionist the nationalism, the stronger this effect will be. We consider that these effects are due to the fact that nationalists vote on the basis of representation rather than government performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the shortcomings of the literature on strategic voting is the absence of empirical evidence in proportional representation electoral systems (PR systems). In this paper the existence of strategic voting in the 1996 regional elections in Andalusia is demonstrated using a pooled cross- section regression model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the psychological effects of the electoral system, paying attention to the influence that the size or magnitude of the electoral district has on the strategic use of the vote in the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados elections. In order to measure the incidence of the strategic vote on the behaviour of Spanish voters between 1982 and 2000, the various approaches proposed for studying this phenomenon are applied. The results make it possible to confirm that the institutional variable forming the electoral system - the size or dimension of the district, in other words the difference between large and small districts - has an influence on the behaviour of voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]