Voters elect politicians who closely matched their preferences

Marco Portmann, David Stadelmann and Reiner Eichenberger ()

CREMA Working Paper Series from Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA)

Abstract: What determines political candidates? election prospects? We match roll call votes of candidates for the majority elected upper house of parliament who were previously in the lower house with revealed preferences of their constituency. Thereby, we obtain a direct measure of past congruence. Politicians have a significantly and quantitatively important higher probability of election when they more closely matched the preferences of their constituency. This pr ovides evidence for the direct retrospective voting rule that voters elect politicians who represented their preferences well.

Keywords: Retrospective Voting; Voting Behavior; Representation; Constituents? Preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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Journal Article: Voters elect politicians who closely matched their preferences (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cra:wpaper:2012-10

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