Voting In Legislative Elections Under Plurality Rule

Niall Hughes

CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA

Abstract: Models of single district plurality elections show that with three parties anything can happen - extreme policies can win regardless of voter preferences. I show that when single district elections are used to fill a legislature we get back to a world where the median voter matters. An extreme policy will generally only come about if it is preferred to a more moderate policy by the median voter in a majority of districts. The mere existence of a centrist party can lead to moderate outcomes even if the party itself wins few seats. Furthermore, I show that while standard single district elections always have misaligned voting i.e. some voters do not vote for their preferred choice, equilibria of the legislative election exist with no misaligned voting in any district. Finally, I show that when parties are impatient, a fixed rule on how legislative bargaining occurs will lead to more coalition governments, while uncertainty will favour single party governments

Keywords: Strategic Voting; Legislative Elections; Duverger's Law; Plurality Rule; Polarization; Poisson Games JEL Classification Numbers: C71; C72; D71; D72; D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... r_plurality_rule.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Voting in legislative elections under plurality rule (2016)
Working Paper: Voting in Legislative Elections Under Plurality Rule (2015)
Working Paper: Voting In Legislative Elections Under Plurality Rule (2015)
Working Paper: VOTING IN LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS UNDER PLURALITY RULE (2014)
Working Paper: Voting in Legislative Elections Under Plurality Rule (2014)
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