Canonical ecology and the analysis of aggregate voting models

This chapter broadly surveys spatial voting models of party competition in two dimensions, where, in Western democracies, the first dimension is typically the left-right dimension pertaining to policy debates over income redistribution and government intervention in the economy. The second dimension may encompass policy debates over issues that cross-cut the left-right economic dimension, or it may encompass universally valued “valence” dimensions of party evaluation such as parties’ images for competence, integrity, and leadership ability. The chapter reviews models with office-seeking and policy-seeking parties. It also surveys both the theoretical and the empirical literatures on these topics.

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Heterogeneous preferences in multidimensional spatial voting models: Ideology and nationalism in Spain

Electoral Studies ◽

10.1016/j.electstud.2015.06.002 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 40 ◽

pp. 136-145 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Gonzalo Rivero

Keyword(s):

Heterogeneous Preferences ◽

Spatial Voting ◽

Voting Models

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Issues and Party Competition in the Netherlands

Comparative Political Studies ◽

10.1177/0010414099032001003 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 63-99 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

KEES AARTS ◽

STUART ELAINE MACDONALD ◽

GEORGE RABINOWITZ

Keyword(s):

The Netherlands ◽

Party Competition ◽

Dutch Politics ◽

Consociational Democracy ◽

Party Choice ◽

Low Threshold ◽

Party Strength ◽

Substantial Change ◽

Voting Models ◽

Homogeneous Culture

The Netherlands represents the prototypic case of a consociational democracy; in addition, the Dutch system has an extremely low threshold for obtaining representation in the legislature, making it open to challengers of any political persuasion. This article has two explicit goals: to compare two models of issue-based party choice, the directional and proximity models; and to understand the changing nature of electoral competition in the Netherlands. The article's analytic focus is the elections of 1971, 1986, and 1994. These elections, the only ones for which appropriate data are available for testing the issue theories, represent important points in the historical sequence. Tests of the alternate issue voting models generally favor directional over proximity theory. The broader analysis suggests substantial change in Dutch politics, away from the tight structuring of subcultural allegiances to a more politically homogeneous culture in which party strength appears rather fluid.

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Partisan Cycles in Congressional Elections and the Macroeconomy

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1962396 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 83 (2) ◽

pp. 373-398 ◽

Cited By ~ 117

Author(s):

Alberto Alesina ◽

Howard Rosenthal

Keyword(s):

Economic Growth ◽

Rational Expectations ◽

Presidential Elections ◽

Congressional Elections ◽

Congressional Election ◽

Retrospective Voting ◽

Midterm Elections ◽

State Of The Economy ◽

Voting Models ◽

Better Than

In the postwar United States the president's party has always done worse in the midterm congressional elections than in the previous congressional election. Republican administrations exhibit below-average, and Democratic administrations above-average, economic growth in the first half of each term, whereas in the latter halves the two see equal growth. Our rational expectations model is consistent with these two regularities. In presidential elections, voters choose between two polarized candidates. They then use midterm elections to counterbalance the president's policies by strengthening the opposition in Congress. Since presidents of different parties are associated with different policies, our model predicts a (spurious) correlation between the state of the economy and elections. Our predictions contrast with those of retrospective voting models, in which voters reward the incumbent if the economy is doing well before the election. Our model performs empirically at least as well as, and often better than, alternative models.

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