Primaries with strategic voters: trading off electability and ideology

Mohammad Mirhosseini ()

Social Choice and Welfare, 2015, vol. 44, issue 3, 457-471

Abstract: This paper presents a spatial model of primary election to analyze strategic voting and its effect on the policy outcome. Primary voters care for the electability of the candidates as well as their offered policies. The trade off between these two factors might make the preferences of the primary voters non-single-peaked. I show the median voter is still decisive when the preferences are quadratic. Moreover, I use comparative statics and numerical analysis to evaluate the conditions under which the position of the Condorcet winner in the primary election shifts toward the center. Among the conditions that contribute to such a shift are radical policies by the incumbent, public opinion shift toward the incumbent party, and accurate information about the population median. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1007/s00355-014-0845-4

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