Spatial Model Of Electoral Competition Research Articles

Moving toward the Median: Compulsory Voting and Political Polarization

Should turning out to vote in mass elections be voluntary or compulsory? Previous normative arguments for compulsory voting often rely on contested normative claims about the moral duty to vote or about the democratic legitimacy conveyed by high turnout. Our article strengthens the normative case for compulsory voting by arguing that it could improve democracy by reducing polarization, which existing work suggests can lead to democratic backsliding. Drawing on spatial models of electoral competition, we argue that, by reducing more extreme voters’ ability to threaten to abstain due to alienation, the introduction of compulsory voting can push party platforms toward the median voter’s preferences. This directly decreases party polarization, defined as the distance between party platforms. We examine potential normative and empirical objections to this argument and provide scope conditions under which compulsory voting is likely to decrease polarization.

Manifestos and public opinion: testing the relevance of spatial models to explain salience choices

According to Downs’ spatial model of electoral competition, in two-party systems, political parties move closer to the median voter’s preferences, while in multiparty democracies, party platforms target their own electorate. This model has been used to predict parties’ policy positions, but never to explain their salience choices. Based on data from political manifestos and public opinion in 23 European countries from 2004 to 2012, we show that the Downsian model can be applied to salience strategies when issue attention is different among left-wing and right-wing voters. In line with the spatial theory, parties choose to place emphasis on different issues in their manifestos depending on the importance attached to each of these issues by either the median voter or their partisan voters, depending on their size and the characteristics of the party system.

Mixed equilibriums in a three-candidate spatial model with candidate valence

We study a spatial model of electoral competition among three office-motivated candidates of unequal valence (one advantaged and two equally disadvantaged candidates) under majority rule assuming that candidates are uncertain about the voters’ policy preferences and that the policy space consists of three alternatives (one at each extreme of the linear policy spectrum and one in the center) and we characterize mixed strategy Nash equilibriums of the game. Counterintuitively, we show that (a) when uncertainty about voters’ preferences is high, the advantaged candidate might choose in equilibrium a more extremist strategy than the disadvantaged candidates and that (b) when uncertainty about voters’ preferences is low, there exist equilibriums in which one of the disadvantaged candidates has a larger probability of election than the disadvantaged candidate of the equivalent two-candidate (one advantaged and one disadvantaged candidate) case.

Seizing the mantle of change: Modeling candidate quality as effectiveness instead of valence

In spatial models of electoral competition, candidate quality is typically modeled as valence, a measure of general appeal assumed to be constant across voters. This paper introduces and formally models an alternative conception of candidate quality according to which candidates differ in their effectiveness, or likelihood of changing policy from the status quo. Although more effective candidates are electorally favored, voters’ benefits from effectiveness are contingent on their policy preferences. The effectiveness model shares many qualitative features with the valence model, but adds several testable implications related to the position of the status quo and gives rise to non-monotonic voting. When valence and effectiveness are combined, valence dominates effectiveness in determining the winner if and only if the status quo policy is sufficiently close to the political center.

Identification of voters with interest groups improves the electoral chances of the challenger

This short paper investigates the consequences of voters identifying with special interest groups in a spatial model of electoral competition. We show that by effectively coordinating voting behavior, identification with interest groups leads to an increase in the size of the winning set, that is, the set of policy platforms for the challenger that will defeat the incumbent. Consequently, our paper points at a novel process through which interest groups can enhance the electoral chances of a challenger.

Identification of Voters with Interest Groups Improves the Electoral Chances of the Challenger

Interest groups are introduced in a spatial model of electoral competition between two political parties. We show that, by coordinating voting behavior, these interest groups increase the winning set, which is defined as the set of policy platforms for the challenger that will defeat the incumbent. Therefore interest groups enhance the probability of the challenger winning the election.

On the Size of the Winning Set in the Presence of Interest Groups

Interest groups are introduced in a spatial model of electoral competition between two political parties. We show that the presence of these interest groups increases the winning set, which is the set of policy platforms for the challenger that will defeat the incumbent. Therefore, interest groups enhance the probability of the challenger winning the election.

Parties in Elections, Parties in Government, and Partisan Bias

Political parties are active when citizens choose among candidates inelectionsand when winning candidates choose among policy alternatives ingovernment. But the inextricably linked institutions, incentives, and behavior that determine these multistage choices are substantively complex and analytically unwieldy, particularly if modeled explicitly and considered in total, from citizen preferences through government outcomes. To strike a balance between complexity and tractability, we modify standard spatial models of electoral competition and governmental policy-making to study how components of partisanship—such as candidate platform separation in elections, party ID-based voting, national partisan tides, and party-disciplined behavior in the legislature—are related to policy outcomes. We definepartisan biasas the distance between the following two points in a conventional choice space: the ideal point of the median voter in the median legislative district and the policy outcome selected by the elected legislature. The study reveals that none of the party-in-electorate conditions is capable of producing partisan bias independently. Specified combinations of conditions, however, can significantly increase the bias and/or the variance of policy outcomes, sometimes in subtle ways.

Parties in Elections, Parties in Government, and Partisan Bias

Political parties are active when citizens choose among candidates in elections, and when winning candidates choose among policy alternatives in government. But the inextricably linked institutions, incentives, and behavior that determine these multistage choices are substantively complex and analytically unwieldy, particularly if modeled explicitly and considered in total: from citizen preferences through government outcomes. To strike a balance between complexity and tractability, we modify standard spatial models of electoral competition and governmental policy-making and develop a model to study how components of partisanship - such as candidate platform separation in elections, party-ID-based voting, national partisan tides, and party-disciplined behavior in the legislature - are related to outcomes that deviate systematically from a citizen-based central benchmark. Such deviation is called partisan bias. The study reveals that none of the party-in-electorate conditions is capable of producing biased policy outcomes independently. Specified combinations of conditions, however, can significantly increase the bias and/or the variance of policy outcomes, sometimes in subtle ways.

Testing Spatial Models of Elections: The Influence of Voters and Elites on Candidate Issue Positions

This research tests spatial models of electoral competition using survey data on state legislative candidates' policy positions and ideology in eight U.S. states. Our data support several hypotheses: 1) candidates' issue positions do not converge; 2) party elites have more extreme positions than do candidates; 3) candidate issue positioning is a function of party‐elite issue positions and union involvement in the campaign, as well as constituency characteristics; and 4) when candidates rely heavily on elite resources during their campaign, elites become more important in shaping candidate issue positions.

Ambiguity in election games

We construct a model in which the ambiguity of candidates allows them to increase the number of voters to whom they appeal. We focus our analysis on two points that are central to obtain ambiguity in equilibrium: restrictions on the beliefs that candidates can induce in voters, and intensity of voters' preferences. The first is necessary for a pure strategy equilibrium to exist, while the second is necessary for ambiguity in equilibrium when there exists a Condorcet winner in the set of pure alternatives (e.g. the spatial model of electoral competition), and when candidates' only objective is to win the election. In this last case, an ambiguous candidate may offer voters with different preferences the hope that their most preferred alternative will be implemented. We also show that if there are sufficiently many candidates or parties, ambiguity will not be possible in equilibrium, but a larger set of possible policies increases the chance that at least one candidate will choose to be ambiguous in equilibrium. Ambiguity thus increases the number of voters to whom a party may appeal. This fact encourages parties in a two party system to be as equivocal as possible about their stands on each controversial issue. And since both parties find it rational to be ambiguous, neither is forced by the other's clarity to take a more precise stand.

An Empirical Spatial Model of Congressional Campaigns

Testing and estimating formal models of political behavior has not advanced as far as theoretical applications. One of the major literatures in formal theory is the spatial model of electoral competition which has its origins in the work of Black (1948) and Downs (1957). These models are used to make predictions about the policy positions candidates take in order to win elections. A lack of data on these candidate positions, especially challengers who never serve in Congress, has made direct testing of these models on congressional elections difficult.Recently, researchers have begun to incorporate campaign finance into the standard Downsian model. These models of position-induced contributions examine the tradeoff that candidates make between choosing positions favorable to interest group contributors and positions favorable to voters. A major premise of these models is that interest group contributions are based on the policy positions of candidates. This has been borne out empirically in the case of incumbents, but not challengers.To test key hypotheses of these models, we develop a simple spatial model of position-induced campaign contributions where the PAC's decision to contribute or abstain from each race is a function of the policy distance between the PAC and the candidates. We use data from political action committee contributions in order to estimate the locations of incumbents, challengers and PACs. Our model reliably estimates the spatial positions as well as correctly predicts nearly 74 percent of the contribution and abstention decisions of the PACs. Conditional upon making a contribution, we correctly predict the contribution in 94 percent of the cases. These results are strong evidence for position-induced campaign contributions. Furthermore, our estimates of candidate positions allow us to address issues of platform convergence between candidates.

Discriminating between the directional and proximity spatial models of electoral competition

The directional spatial model of electoral competition – recently introduced by Rabinowitz and Macdonald – specifies utility as keyed to intensity of preference and communality of direction between voters and candidates on dichotomous issues. This models stands in contrast to the traditional proximity spatial model which represents utility as a declining function of distance between voter and candidate ideal positions. This paper tests the contrasting predictions of the proximity and directional spatial models, employing data from American and Norwegian Election Studies and controlling for the effects of voter sophistication and issue-placement of candidates by voters. In contrast to previous studies which heavily favour the directional model, the current analysis does not support either pure model over the other but rather a mixed model, which reflects both similarity in issue positions between voters and candidates and the intensities of the voters' and candidates' positions on these issues.

Third parties in equilibrium

Under standard assumptions equilibria with three parties normally do not exist in spatial models of electoral competition. In this paper I show that such equilibria are possible if it is assumed that voters are uncertain about the exact policies parties will adopt once elected. Substantive predictions can be derived from the model, explaining some features of three-party competition. First, the least risk party will always take the most moderate position. Second, this position is also winning. Third, the two riskier parties are always on opposite sides of the median voter and also of the moderate party.

A Probabilistic Model for the Spatial Distribution of Party Support in Multiparty Electorates

Abstract Spatial models of electoral competition locate voters and parties at points in euclidean space—representing issue positions—and specify utility of voters for parties as functions of these positions. Utility functions may also have stochastic components unassociated with issues. In this article probabilistic models are compared in which the utility function incorporates distance between voter and party positions (proximity model) or a scalar product (directional model). Model specification is significant because of its relation to party strategy and the resulting spatial distribution of parties. Maximum likelihood is used to estimate parameters of a mixed directional and proximity model—with stochastic and strategic components—from data in Norwegian and Swedish election studies. Expected spatial distributions of voters by party support are determined for the multiparty electorates of Norway and Sweden. Unlike previous deterministic work, which strongly favors the directional model, the results obt...

Voting behavior under the directional spatial model of electoral competition

This paper contrasts voting behavior in multicandidate elections between the proximity and the directional spatial models of electoral competition. Under the traditionalproximity spatial model, a voter's utility for a candidate is a declining function of distance between their respective positions. Under thedirectional spatial model, introduced by Rabinowitz and Macdonald, utility is specified as the scalar product of the vectors representing voter and candidate. The present paper specifies and compares regions of candidate support for the two models and for several voting procedures. The degree to which each model and voting system favors extremist versus centrist candidates is assessed. It is shown that a pure directional model implies that candidates lying in the interior of the convex hull of the other candidates receive no support under the single-vote plurality procedure. A one-parameter family of mixed proximity and directional models may provide more plausible descriptions of voter behavior than either pure model.

A model of party constraints on optimal candidate positions

In this paper, we propose a generalized version of the spatial model of electoral competition. A model of political parties is developed and a general theorem about the existence of distinct Nash equilibria distributions of party activists is proven. Candidates are assumed to acquire resources from the party and its activists and through the candidate's own campaign organization to assist in their campaign efforts, and they are assumed to value both winning and policy outcomes. We then explore the formal properties of this more general model, especially examining the impact of party-based resources and of candidate policy preferences on the optimal location of candidates. We show, in particular, that such positions will, in general, be divergent, and yet there will be regular differentiation between the nominees of the two political parties.

Electoral Politics as a Redistributive Game

Spatial models of electoral competition typically simplify the analysis by ignoring the question of internal constituency politics: constituencies are modeled simply as a distribution of ideal points along a set of issue dimensions. Matters related to the stability of divergent electoral coalitions have rarely been addressed. We explicitly take into account how differential rates of support by various groups in a constituency will influence candidates' campaign promises and the likelihood that stable electoral coalitions will be forged. Viewing campaign platforms as promised redistributions of welfare, we argue that the optimal strategy for risk-averse candidates will be to promise redistributions first and foremost to their reelection constituency and thereby to maintain existing political coalitions. We use evidence from the urban services literature to support our propositions.

A Downsian Spatial Model with Party Activism

A unidimensional spatial model is proposed in this article. Although its formal structure parallels the spatial model of electoral competition, this model examines the decisions of individuals as they choose whether or not to become activists in one of two political parties. An individual “calculus of participation” is developed that is similar to the spatial interpretation of the “calculus of voting.” This calculus is then generalized by examining conditions that may hold for aggregate activism probabilities, and the relationship between the two forms is investigated. Some results are then presented which concern the distributions of activists in the two parties. These results in general conform to the existence of “party cleavages,” in which there are two stable (equilibrium) distributions of activists, such that the two parties' activists are relatively cohesive internally and relatively distinctive externally. Finally, some suggestions are offered about how this model can be combined with the spatial model of candidate competition to provide a more complete model of elections.

Electoral outcomes with probabilistic voting and Nash social welfare maxima

This paper provides unexpected support to Nash's view of how bargaining determines the social choice. We first present a spatial model of electoral competition with probabilistic voting and a very close relation between voters' preferences and their choice probabilities. The outcome of the electoral competition game is then shown to be precisely the social alternative that maximizes a Nash-type social welfare function (theorem 1). This electoral outcome is also interpreted as a unanimity likelihood maximum (corollary 1). Within our framework, existence and uniqueness of such an outcome are guaranteed (corollaries 2 and 3).