Abstract

The share of voters participating in national elections from abroad is evergrowing. Despite this, expatriates constitute one of the most understudied groups of electors. Some existing analyses have shown that expatriates support different parties than voters residing at home. However, the reasons for this effect remain in the dark. In this article, we test common electoral theories—socio-structural, socio-psychological, and issue voting—and their relevance for voters at home and abroad. Additionally, we test if differences in voting behaviour are due to compositional or behavioural reasons. In line with previous studies, we show that expatriates support other parties, in the Swiss case left parties, than voters at home. We further show that this gap cannot be explained by the different composition of the expatriate community but rather by their different behavioural motivations. Expatriates more often base their vote choice on their social class and religious beliefs. Partisanship voting and, to some extent, issue voting are less important in the expatriate community. The findings are based on the Swiss National Election Study 2011 and additional interviews conducted among Swiss residing abroad.

中文翻译：

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生活在国外，像在家里一样投票？外籍人士的选举动机1

摘要

从国外参加全国选举的选民比例不断增加。尽管如此，外籍人士仍是研究最少的选民群体之一。一些现有的分析表明，外籍人士支持的政党与居住在国内的选民不同。然而，这种影响的原因仍然不明。在本文中，我们测试了常见的选举理论——社会结构、社会心理学和议题投票——以及它们与国内外选民的相关性。此外，我们测试投票行为的差异是否是由于组成或行为原因。与之前的研究一致，我们表明外籍人士支持其他政党，在瑞士的案例中是左翼政党，而不是国内选民。我们进一步表明，这种差距不能用外籍人士社区的不同组成来解释，而是用他们不同的行为动机来解释。外籍人士更多地根据他们的社会阶层和宗教信仰进行投票。党派投票以及某种程度上的议题投票在外籍人士社区中不太重要。调查结果基于 2011 年瑞士全国选举研究和对居住在国外的瑞士人进行的额外采访。