Switching Political Affiliation: Electoral-List Mobility in Poland, 2005–2015
Switching Political Affiliation: Electoral-List Mobility in Poland, 2005–2015

Summary/Abstract: The goal of this article is to establish (a) the relationship between electoral lists, party membership,and changes in party affiliation in the context of (b) electoral-list mobility. Our basic premise is that the gibleinstitutional rules for placing candidates on electoral lists favors mobility between lists. We use data from theEAST PaC Database (2005–2015), which allows us to estimate to what extent the composition of electoral listsdiffers in terms of the party affiliation of candidates and to track the mobility of parliamentary candidates betweenelectoral lists in consecutive elections. Our basic findings confirm that candidates who changed party affiliationand those who were independent were most likely to change electoral lists. This is a quite surprising findingbecause according to studies (Shabad and Słomczyński 2002, 2004) such candidates, whose election potential isuncertain, should be unwelcome on new electoral lists.

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