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One key trend changing political environments across advanced industrial democracies is increasing electoral volatility. Despite extensive research, at the individual level we still know relatively little about the mechanisms behind electoral volatility during election campaigns, including the impact of political knowledge. Against this background and based on a four-wave panel study in the context of the 2014 Swedish national election, the purpose of this paper is to investigate (a) patterns of intra-election volatility and the impact of (b) political knowledge on patterns of electoral volatility. Distinguishing between party alienation, crystallization, wavering, reinforcement, and conversion, among other things, findings show some effects from political knowledge on patterns of electoral volatility but only for acquired political knowledge.

In the last decades, electoral volatility has been on the rise in Western democracies. Scholars have proposed several explanations for this phenomenon of floating voters. Exposure to media coverage as a short-term explanation for electoral volatility has of yet been understudied. This study examines the effect of media content (issue news and poll news) on two different types of vote change: conversion, switching from one party to another, and crystallization, switching from being undecided to casting a vote for a party. We use a national panel survey (N = 765) and link this to a content analysis of campaign news on television and in newspapers during national Dutch elections. Findings reveal that exposure to issue news increases the chance of crystallization, whereas it decreases the chance of conversion. Conversely, exposure to poll news increases the chance of conversion, whereas it decreases the chance of crystallization.