Making voice count

Economic voting claims that citizens will reward or punish the incumbent government based on the state of the economy as a mechanism of democratic accountability. In negative economic voting, in order to vote against the government, citizens must have options (parties) in which to place their vote to voice discontent. If not, there is no opportunity to cast an ‘economic vote’ and abstention results, leading to a weakened economic effect. In this article I argue that the electoral system indirectly mediates the relationship between the economy and the vote by determining the number of viable parties which act as the conduit for punishing the incumbent. Cross-national data and individual-level data for the case of Spain are used to test the impact of the number of parties on economic voting. The findings suggest that when there are more viable parties competing, the probability of casting an economic vote increases.