How Decisive Is the Decisive Voter?

Eric J. Brunner () and Stephen Ross ()

No 2007-28, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper examines whether the voter with the median income is decisive in local spending decisions. Previous tests have relied on cross-sectional data while we make use of a pair of California referenda to estimate a first difference specification. The referenda proposed to lower the required vote share for passing local educational bonding initiatives from 67 to 50 percent and 67 to 55 percent, respectively. The jurisdiction median income appears to accurately capture the expected outcomes of majority votes on public service spending, and voters rationally consider such future public service decisions when deciding how to vote on voting rules

Keywords: Median Voter Hypothesis; Voting; Referenda; Preference Heterogeneity; Education Spending (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H4 H7 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-ure
Date: 2007-07
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.uconn.edu/working/2007-28r.pdf Full text (revised version) (application/pdf)
http://www.econ.uconn.edu/working/2007-28.pdf Full text (original version) (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics
Address: University of Connecticut 341 Mansfield Road, Unit 1063 Storrs, CT 06269-1063
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().