Electoral behaviour in a two-vote system: Incentives for ticket splitting in German Bundestag elections

. The ballot structure of German Bundestag elections allows two votes: one for a constituency candidate and the second for a party list. About one‐fifth of the voters usually split their ticket. Several hypotheses are derived about incentives for ticket splitting and tested with survey data from a 1998 pre‐election poll. We argue that an explanation of split tickets in the German system has to take into account both party rankings and coalition preferences. One of the most important incentives is a preference or top ranking of a minor party like the FDP or Greens, if it is combined with a preference for a coalition with either the CDU/CSU or SPD. Contrary to this finding, the hypothesis of threshold insurance voting of CDU/CSU or SPD supporters choosing the party list of their prospective minor coalition partner is rejected for the 1998 election.