Do Voters Pay Attention to Transnational Politics? Party Positions, Transnational Families, and Voter Perceptions

Do voters pay attention to a party’s relationship with its party family? In this paper, I argue that transnational brands such as the party family label assigned to a party are a valuable tool for parties to use to distinguish themselves. In turn, voters can more accurately position parties on the left-right spectrum when the party embraces the ideological profile of the rest of its party family. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) and the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), the results confirm my expectations that the ideological alignment of party and party family shapes the accuracy of a voter’s perception of the party’s positions. My findings provide support for the argument that transnational brands can influence how domestic political parties are perceived. These findings have important implications for our understanding of voter responsiveness in an increasingly transnational political space the role of transnational political brands.