Political Trust as a Determinant of Volatile Vote Intentions: Separating Within- from Between-Person Effects

Abstract

This article studies the oft-assumed destabilizing effect of political distrust on party preferences. We argue that there are two mechanisms that relate political trust to electoral volatility: (1) structurally low trust undermines the formation of stable party preferences and thereby stimulates volatility, and (2) declining trust drives voters, particularly supporters of parties in government, to change party preference. These rivaling mechanisms are often conflated. Using the within-between random effects approach on two extensive panel data sets (covering three different governmental periods in The Netherlands between 2006 and 2017) allows us to separate both mechanisms and estimate them simultaneously. We find evidence for both the structural and the dynamic effects of political trust on changing vote intentions.