Models of Electoral Choice

Abstract

The spatial model of voting, as pioneered by Downs (1957), is often considered the workhorse of modern electoral studies. In a nutshell, any spatial voting model must necessarily assert that the political preferences of voters and the programmatic positions of political parties are meaningfully related in a political space and that these relations matter for party evaluation and vote choice. But here the consensus ends. Spatial modelers disagree emphatically on how to locate political actors and how to relate voter and party positions with party evaluation and vote choice. Within the narrower family of spatial voting models, voters may care to select parties which agree with their ideological or programmatic ideal points (i.e. “proximity voting”). Given the constraints elected officials face to deliver their advertised policy goals, voters may factor in checks, balances, political compromise and an abundance of veto players and “overshoot the mark” to get their desired policies enacted (i.e. “discounting” or “compensational voting”). Ultimately, voters may cease to care about preferred positions on a policy continuum, but instead aim to push for change into their desired direction (i.e. “directional voting”). We invite papers which focus on theoretical and empirical aspects regarding formal models of vote choice. We especially welcome papers which o apply spatial voting models to one- and multidimensional policy spaces; o compare models of vote choice in different elections and across different countries; o discriminate between different motives of vote choice (e.g. between proximity, compensational, and directional models); o discuss and incorporate non-policy motivations such as party identification, economic performance, etc.; o link vote choice and party strategy and, for instance, discuss equilibrium positions taken by political parties.

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