In this interactive exercise, you will work with the fifth wave of the CSES election surveys dataset. On the left, two dropdown menus control the plot shown on the right. Select a country in the first menu. If you do so, you will see the result of the most recent election in that country, including an average left-right placement by the voters. The dashed line represents the position of the mean voter in the country. With the second dropdown menu, you can select a possible coalition that would have a majority after the election. Of course, it is possible to form a minority government. Still, for this exercise, we will keep the choices to majority coalitions. We also do not include any elections in which a party achieved more than 50% of the vote (e.g. Hungary). When you select a possible coalition, you will see the position of the coalition as well as the parties on the left-right scale. The position of the coalition is the calculated mean of the left-right positions of the coalition partners, weighted by their seat share.

Using this panel, please answer the following questions:

1. Are the coalitions that are actually formed after an election mostly the best in terms of congruence to the mean voter?

2. Find an instance in which a less congruent coalition was formed. What other reasons led to the formation of this coalition?

3. In which instance would it have been better in terms of congruence for one party to form a minority government instead of a coalition? For more details on minority governments, see chapter 10 of the book.