Voter Turnout and Candidate Strategies in American Elections

Abstract

Most spatial models of two-candidate competition imply that candidates have electoral incentives to present similar, centrist policies. We modify the standard Downsian model to include three observations supported by empirical research on American elections: that voters are prepared to abstain if neither competitor is sufficiently attractive (abstention due to alienation) or if the candidates are insufficiently differentiated (abstention due to indifference); that voters are influenced by factors such as education, race, and partisanship that are not directly tied to the candidates' positions in the current campaign; and that voters' nonpolicy characteristics correlate with their policy preferences. Our results suggest that voters' turnout decisions and their nonpolicy characteristics, even if the candidates in the course of a campaign cannot manipulate the latter, are nonetheless necessary for understanding candidates' policy strategies.

Political competition between differentiated candidates

“…To our knowledge, the only model with an equilibrium in which office-motivated candidates choose divergent platforms is Adams and Merrill (2003). Our results indicate that this must be due to non-UCR preferences in their model.…”

“…The idea that candidates differ in some fixed issues while they are flexible on others has been introduced in the political science literature by Erikson and Romero (1990) and Adams and Merrill (2003),who analyze whether candidates select the same policy position. While the equilibrium in Erikson and Romero (1990) features policy convergence (i.e., candidates choose the same policies), candidates diverge in the model of Adams and Merrill (2003).…”

“…While the equilibrium in Erikson and Romero (1990) features policy convergence (i.e., candidates choose the same policies), candidates diverge in the model of Adams and Merrill (2003). The first major contribution of our paper is to specify a general model that allows us to understand how the type of voter preferences generates convergence or divergence results, and allows us to analyze how differences in fixed positions or characteristics affect the candidates' platform choice.…”

“…A second main contribution of this paper is to introduce and explore a new 1 An exception is the model by Adams and Merrill (2003), which we discuss in more detail in Example 3 below. 1 and appealing class of such models.…”

Policy-Motivated Parties in Dynamic Political Competition

“…We introduce a model of Bayesian inference in the traditional spatial context which allows policy-motivated parties to use information about the past to update 10 JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS 19 (1) 1. For notable exceptions see Groseclose (2001) and Adams and Merrill (2003) who study the valence advantage in the context of Wittman equilibrium. their beliefs about the state of the electorate. We then analyze the effect of information gained in previous elections on equilibrium policies offered by the two parties.…”