Conflicted voters: A spatial voting model with multiple party identifications

Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde and João V. Ferreira
Additional contact information
João V. Ferreira: AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In this paper, we develop a unified spatial model of turnout and voting behaviors in which citizens can identify with one or two parties. We show the existence of a conflicted voter's curse: If there is no position that reconciles the ideological views of both parties, it is always rational for citizens that identify with two parties to abstain even if they are a majority. In a two-candidate electoral competition, the conflicted voter's curse implies that candidates converge to the center of the political domain if and only if conflicted voters are pivotal and the parties have shared ideological views. Otherwise, we show that candidates may converge or diverge depending upon the degree of party polarization and whether candidates care about ideology or not. Our analysis suggests that the behavior of conflicted voters may be relevant for electoral outcomes and public choice.

Keywords: spatial voting; party identification; conflicted voters; electoral competition; party polarization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://amu.hal.science/hal-02909682v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2020, 174, pp.360 - 379. ⟨10.1016/j.jebo.2016.12.003⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://amu.hal.science/hal-02909682v1/document (application/pdf)

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

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02909682

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.12.003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().