Should I Stay or Should I Go? Testing the Influence of Ambivalence on Vote Switching in the German Multi-party Context

Does political ambivalence increase vote switching? While the effects of ambivalence on vote switching have been investigated in the American political sys-tem, its application to multi-party systems has not been explored. To address this gap, this article investigates the effects of ambivalence on vote intention switching and vote switching in Germany's multi-party system, which has recently experienced electoral instability. Using the German Longitudinal Election Study (gles), the article teases out the mechanics of party ambivalence, leader ambivalence, and party-leader ambivalence. The results suggest that ambivalence increases the probability of vot-ers switching parties during the pre-election campaigning period and between two consecutive elections. Ambivalence therefore has important implications for vote switching and for understanding the underlying determinants of electoral volatility in twenty-first-century politics.