Party Experience, Consistency and Partisanship.

This paper investigates how party experience and consistency shape party identification and vote choice. I find thatindividuals are more likely to be partisans of parties with electoral and governmental experience, but that they arenot more likely to vote for experienced parties, controlling for their party identification. Second, I find thatparties are more likely to attract individuals that are ideologically distant from them if they adopt ambiguouspositions. This is the case for both partisans and voters. Ambiguity does not have a robust effect on partisanship forindividuals ideologically close to a party, but it has a significantly negative effect on vote choice for individualsclose to a party. The paper draws on the retrospective notion of partisanship to form hypotheses about partyexperience and consistency. These are then tested using a multilevel model of survey respondents in 41 parties in 14advanced parliamentary democracies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]