Voting and satisfaction with democracy in flexible-list PR

A vast literature shows that voting for the winning party in elections boosts satisfaction with democracy. But in many list PR systems, voters do not only vote for a party, they can also vote for candidates within parties. Yet, we know very little about how such votes affect voters' satisfaction with democracy. In this paper, we analyse pre- and post-election panel survey data from Belgium, in which we asked respondents to report their vote choice for parties and for candidates. The main finding is that casting a preference vote for a winning candidate makes little difference, as party-list voters are those with the largest increase in satisfaction with democracy. Such a finding is very important as reforms that increase voters' opportunities to vote for candidates within list have multiplied recently, and many of these reforms have been justified as being in line with voters' demand for more candidate-centred electoral systems.