A Citizen-Candidate Model with Sequential Elections

Abstract

This article develops a citizen-candidate model with sequential elections. The model highlights the strategic considerations associated with the primary process, which hinge on the preferences of party members, in particular the party medians and the party boundaries. It is shown that although electoral competition leads to convergence in platforms, the primary process limits such convergence. Intuitively, this results from candidates having to please two different sets of citizens in successive races (party members in the primary and the electorate as a whole in the general election).

California’s Top Two Primary and the Business Agenda

“…Early formal modeling-as well as some more recent work-suggested that the presence of primary elections might be pulling parties to the extremes by allowing candidates to be chosen by a less diverse electorate than would be present in the general election (Aranson and Ordeshook 1972;Aldrich 1983;Cadigan and Janeba 2002;Owen and Grofman 2006). But more recent theoretical work has cast doubt on this simple idea.…”

Elections in a Multi-Party Political System

“…With the utility function specified above, it suffices to assume that c 1 We do not deal with issues of party primaries here. For them, see Cadigan and Janeba [2] and Owen and Grofman [3].…”

The proximity paradox: the legislative agenda and the electoral success of ideological extremists

“…This paper uses a citizen-candidate model (Osborne and Slivinski 1996;Besley and Coate 1997;Cadigan and Janeba 2002;Klumpp 2007) under a plurality election rule. All citizens are potential candidates who simultaneously decide whether or not to become candidates.…”