The spatial model with non-policy factors: a theory of policy-motivated candidates

Abstract

The theoretical literature on two candidate elections is dominated by symmetric contests and vote-maximizing candidates. These models fail to capture two important features of real elections. First, most elections pit a stronger candidate against a weaker one. Second, candidates care not only about holding office, but also about policy outcomes. Ignoring any one of these features means we will fail to capture an important dynamic—strong candidates must balance their desire to change policy with their need to win the election. We provide conditions for the existence of an equilibrium in the spatial model with non-policy factors, when candidates are policy motivated. We provide a characterization of ‘regular’ equilibria and show that there exists at most one regular equilibrium. We provide conditions that guarantee that all equilibria are regular. We derive comparative statics for the model and show that increasing a candidate’s non-policy advantage causes that candidate to move towards his ideal point.