Calling a Snap Election is a Valence Issue: Measuring the Electoral Cost of Election Timing

In most parliamentary systems, the dates of the elections are not fixed. This gives an incumbent prime minister, party, or cabinet a significant advantage. However, the strategic timing of an election is an opportunistic act that might disappoint at least a fraction of the electorate. Once at the polls, some voters could punish the governing parties for their opportunistic choice. I call these lost votes the electoral cost of calling an early election. How many votes a governing party looses after the decision of calling a snap election? Surprisingly, this topic is seriously understudied in the literature. In this paper, I will provide a theretical explanation of this cost, linking the literature on cabinet termination with the literature on valence issues in spatial models.