What drives rental votes? How coalitions signals facilitate strategic coalition voting

Rental voting is a coalition voting strategy, by which supporters of a senior coalition partner cast their vote for the prospective junior coalition partner to secure its representation in parliament and, hence, the formation of this coalition. We make transparent that previous research has only studied rental-voting in contexts, in which coalition signals were consistent with the rental-vote logic. Employing a qualitative identification strategy, we find evidence for rental voting only in the context with consistent coalition signals. Moreover, respondents exposed to consistent coalition signals behave similarly to voters who most likely did not receive the inconsistent coalition signals they had been exposed to.