How the electorate determines its vote is one of the most studied but still much contested questions in political science. Contemporary assertions point to the interaction between predisposition and information affected by long and short term (contextual) factors. Given this complex decisional environment, attention should be given to how voters ultimately interpret their own electoral choice. This refers to the subjective perception and expression of the vote. Existing research shows this is a mixture of knowledge and judgement, attitude and conviction, perception and intuition. To determine their choice, voters appear to be led by a political map with cognitive and affective directions. Some fairly general and deeply engrained, others focused on specific events preceding the elections. This approach has often been used to let voters reflect in their own words about their electoral choice. These are the voting motives often described in national electoral research. There has been much less concern with such motives at the local level although two main tendencies can be discerned. Some consider local as second order national elections. In this line of thinking, voters will mainly hold national motives (rewarding or punishing nationally governing parties, expressively voting for smaller and/or newer national political parties, etc.). Others emphasize place-bound patterns and dynamics in voting motives (acquaintance with specific candidates, local issues, assessing the locally governing majority, etc.). Still, more research is needed beyond those theoretical presumptions to empirically determine motives for the local vote. Therefore, this paper aims to address two questions: 1. Which types of motives do voters attribute to their choice in local elections? 2. What explains similarities and differences in (1)? To answer these, we draw on the data of the Belgian Local Elections Study 2018. Designed as a non-predictive exit poll conducted in a stratified sample of 45 municipalities on election day, the study contains ...