Equilibrium in Multicandidate Probabilistic Spatial Voting

Tse-Min Lin, James M Enelow and Han Dorussen

Public Choice, 1999, vol. 98, issue 1-2, 59-82

Abstract: This paper presents a multicandidate spatial model of probabilistic voting in which voter utility functions contain a random element specific to each candidate. The model assumes no abstentions, sincere voting, and the maximization of expected vote by each candidate. The authors derive a sufficient condition for concavity of the candidate expected vote function with which the existence of equilibrium is related to the degree of voter uncertainty. They show that, under concavity, convergent equilibrium exists at a 'minimum-sum point' at which total distances from all voter ideal points are minimized. The authors then discuss the location of convergent equilibrium for various measures of distance. In their examples, computer analysis indicates that nonconvergent equilibria are only locally stable and disappear as voter uncertainty increases. Copyright 1999 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1999
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