Politics in Multiparty Context: Multiplicative Specifications, Social Influence, and Electoral Choice

Explanations of electoral choice most frequently focus on the isolated characteristics of voters and examine those characteristics using linear, additive formulations. We explore two alternatives. We first argue that in a multiparty electoral context, the structuring influence of ideology on the vote often will be best represented with a multiplicative specification. Second, we contend that the impact of individual-level traits such as ideology will be moderated by the political climate of the voter's social context. We test these alternative formulations using data concerning the 1989 elections in Honduras, where two major parties and two minor parties vied for support. Multinomial logistic regression results demonstrate that a multiplicative and contextual specification substantially outperforms a more conventional modeling strategy.