Divided We Stand – Unified We Govern? Cohabitation and Regime Voting in the 2002 French Elections

In this article the impact of voters' regime preferences, i.e. their preferences for either divided or unified government, on their voting behaviour, is analysed. The theory expounded, combining behavioural as well as institutional approaches, predicts that voters weigh their regime against their partisan preferences to derive their vote choice. This theory and its implications are tested on the 2002 French legislative elections using a multinomial logit set-up. The results indicate that regime voting adds to the explanatory power of traditional vote-choice models. Statistical simulations provide further evidence that regime preferences play a decisive role in the voting booth, especially for voters who are not politically ‘anchored’.