Evaluating the median voter model’s explanatory power

David Stadelmann, Marco Portmann and Reiner Eichenberger ()

Economics Letters, 2012, vol. 114, issue 3, 312-314

Abstract: We match individual senators’ voting behavior on legislative proposals with 24 real referendum decisions on exactly the same issues with identical wording. This setting allows us to evaluate the median voter model’s quality with revealed constituents’ preferences. Results indicate a limited explanatory power of the median voter model: It explains 17.6% points more than random voting and that a senator’s probability to accept a proposal in parliament increases on average by 8.4% points when the district median voter accepts the proposal.

Keywords: Median voter model; Political representation; Constituents’ preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 H7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:114:y:2012:i:3:p:312-314

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2011.10.015

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