Instrumental and Expressive Coalition Voting: The Case of the FDP in the 2009 and 2013 German Federal Elections

Most accounts of coalition voting are based on instrumental reasoning. However, coalition voting might also be the result of expressive motivations. Using the case of the FDP, this article studies the impact of a varying degree of coalition voting in the German federal elections of 2009 and 2013. According to theories of instrumental coalition voting, there should have been more ‘threshold insurance voting’ at the 2013 election, as the FDP was actually in danger of not crossing the threshold. Yet it is found that there was considerably less coalition voting in 2013 than in the 2009 election. The analysis suggests that a more comprehensive account of coalition voting is needed that considers not only instrumental reasoning but also expressive coalition voting. Taking into account expressive motivations for coalition voting helps to explain the tremendous decline of the FDP vote share in the 2013 German federal election.