Public Choice 97: 229–255, 1998. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 229 Voters’ party preferences in multiparty systems and their coalitional and spatial implications: Germany after unification FRANZ URBAN PAPPI & GABRIELE ECKSTEIN University of Mannheim, Department of Political Science I, P.O. Box, D-68131 Mannheim, Germany; e-mail: fupappi@sowi.uni-mannheim.de; geckstein@sowi.uni-mannheim.de Abstract. How should party preferences of voters in a multiparty system be measured, compared and aggregated? We use city block metric of distances between the pairwise com- parisons of the five German parties (1995 survey data for West and East Germany). Neither in West nor in East Germany, a party gains the absolute majority of voters’ preferences. We derive coalition preferences from the party rankings; the governing coalition of CDU/CSU and FDP is not the winner, compared with other feasible coalitions of the German party system. But the party rankings of the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition leaners are more homogeneous than other groups of coalition leaners. In the second part of the article, we analyze the common structure of all consistent party rankings. Do voters apply the same criteria to evaluate the political parties? Although only a slight majority of individual rankings fit the often used ideological left-right scale, there does not exist a competing one-dimensional order of the parties that would capture more voters. The joint scale of individual party rankings is interpreted as the collective order which facilitates political orientation of voters. This collective order is more pronounced in West than in East Germany where individuals are almost as consistent in their party rankings but where the rankings fit the collective order less well than in West Germany. 1. Introduction In parliamentary systems with proportional representation and multiple par- ties, the prime minister and his or her cabinet are normally dependent on the support and confidence of more than one parliamentary party. These coalition governments are formed anew after each election in which voters choose parties and not coalitions or governments. Coalitional options are discussed during election campaigns, but not all options turn out to be feasible once the election’s returns become known. Contrary to two-party parliamentary systems, the electorate’s signals for a new government are ambiguous, giv- ing the party leaders some leeway in coalition bargaining. But in modern democracies with structured party systems and attentive publics, there also exist restraints for the coalition game. As far as parties are policy seeking, they look for coalition partners close to them in policy or ideological terms. On the other hand, the re-election motive of politicians guarantees that party