‘Less at Stake’ or a Different Game? Regional Elections in Catalonia and Scotland

This article looks for common sources to explain the systematic electoral change produced between regional and general elections in Catalonia and Scotland. In both territories, regional voting shows a systematic pattern whereby nationalist parties tend to have more success in the regional than in the national arena.

Looking for differences and similarities between the two patterns, we first revise the literature on less mobilizing elections and the different answers given to electoral change across arenas in different contexts. Secondly, we use particular data to compare those who remain loyal to the main parties with those who alternate between them depending on the electoral level.

Lastly, we test whether this electoral change is better explained by the idea that regional elections are dependent on, autonomous or different from national politics using multivariate analysis. Two main conclusions emerge. On the one hand, electoral change is produced by change in the salient issues and a change in the main contending parties at each level. For those who change their vote, the regional arena is different from the national one. On the other hand, the evaluation of contextual elements by the party-switchers is related more to autonomous considerations of the regional arena than to dependent evaluations of the national one.