A Unified Theory of Voting Directional and Proximity Spatial Models

This book addresses the questions: how do voters use their own issue positions and those of candidates to decide how to vote? Does a voter tend to choose the candidate who most closely shares the views of the voter or rather a candidate who holds more extreme views due to the fact that the voters discount the candidates' abilities to implement policy. The authors develop a unified model that incorporates these and other voter motivations and assess its empirical predictions - for both voter choice and candidate strategy - in the US, Norway, and France. The analyses show that a combination of proximity, direction, discounting, and party ID are compatible with the mildly but not extremely divergent policies that are characteristic of many two-party and multiparty electorates. All of these motivations are necessary to understand the linkage between candidate issue positions and voter preferences.

1. Introduction; Part I. Models of Voter Behavior: 2. Alternative models of issue voting; 3. A unified model of issue voting: proximity, direction, and intensity; 4. Comparing the empirical fit of the directional and proximity models for voter utility functions; 5. Empirical model fitting using the unified model: voter utility; 6. Empirical fitting of probabilistic models of voter choice in two-party electorates; 7. Empirical fitting of probabilistic models of voter choice in multiparty electorates; Part II. Models of Party or Candidate Behavior and Strategy: 8. Equilibrium strategies for two-candidate directional spatial models; 9. Long-term dynamics of voter choice and party strategy; 10. Strategy and equilibrium in multicandidate elections; 11. Strategy under alternative multicandidate voting procedures.

The authors develop a unified model that incorporates voter motivations and assess its empirical predictions - for both voter choice and candidate strategy - in the US, Norway, and France. The analyses show that a combination of proximity, direction, discounting, and party ID are compatible with the mildly but not extremely divergent policies that are characteristic of many two-party and multiparty electorates.