The Nordic Voter: Myths of Exceptionalism

The Nordic Voter is the first book-length comparative analysis of voting behaviour in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. Leading scholars from national election studies teams present a detailed account of voter turnout, party identification, satisfaction with democracy, preferential voting, government support and party choice. The five-nation study is based on a comparative data set prepared uniquely for this book that allows for comprehensive analysis of the diversity in voting behaviour in the Nordic countries, as well as discrepancies between Nordic and non Nordic countries. The book counters the widespread tendency for comparative analyses to lump Nordic countries together. Its general claim, substantiated by a unique and extensive empirical analysis of voter behaviour, is that the differences between the Nordic countries are in fact so large - in terms of institutional settings and micro-level voting behaviour - that there is no justification for making general claims about a typical `Nordic voter'. The authors challenge presumptions about `remarkable similarities' between Nordic voters, revealing numerous examples of remarkable dissimilarities between voters in the Nordic countries.