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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
Anthony Downs's model of voter choice is customarily interpreted to mean that each voter chooses the candidate whose positions are closest to the voter's. Actually, however, this is too simple a picture of Downs's views. Downs anticipated ideas of prospective and performance-based retrospective voting. He recognized that voters evaluate candidates in terms of their past performances and expectations about future performance, and may discount issue proximity to a candidate if the candidate is not expected to be able to live up to his campaign promises on the issue in question.
1 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957).Google Scholar
2 See, e.g., Davis, Otto A., Hinich, Melvin J. and Ordeshook, Peter C., ‘An Expository Development of a Mathematical Model of Policy Formation in a Democratic Society’, American Political Science Review, 64 (1970), 426–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 See discussion in Grofman, Bernard, ‘The Neglected Role of the Status Quo in Models of Issue Voting’, Journal of Politics, 47 (1985), 231–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar and in Grofman, Bernard, ‘Models of Voting’, in Long, Samuel, ed., Micropolitics Annual (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1987), pp. 31–61Google Scholar, of how Downs's views have been distorted.
4 See McCubbins, Mathew and Schwartz, Thomas, ‘The Politics of Fiatland’, Public Choice, 46 (1985), 45–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Keech, William R., ‘Elections and Macroeconomic Policy Optimization’, American Journal of Political Science, 24 (1980), 345–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Goodin, Robert E., ‘Voting through the Looking Glass’, American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), 420–34, p. 424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 McCubbins, and Schwartz, , ‘The Politics of Flatland’.Google Scholar
7 Our analysis applies for more general specifications but is most easily illustrated under the specified simplifying assumptions. These assumptions are in the spirit of those made by numerous other authors.
8 However, in more than two dimensions there will usually not be an equilibrium outcome of majority-rule voting.
9 Goodin, , ‘Voting Through the Looking Glass’.Google Scholar
10 See Grofman, , ‘The Neglected Role’Google Scholar and Enelow, James and Hinich, Melvin, The Spatial Theory of Voting: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 231–37.Google Scholar
11 For example, Grofman (‘The Neglected Role’) uses his model to show that if the status quo goes too far to the left, voters with centrist and even left-centrist views who wish to move policy somewhat to the right will vote for right-wing candidates over left-wing candidates to whom they are closer in position. Note that sometimes this will lead to ‘overshooting’ the medium voter.
12 This is related to but distinct from the claim that a presidential candidate with foreign-policy experience will make foreign policy a campaign issue, and that one with management experience will emphasize efficiency in government.
13 Cf. Coughlin, Peter and Nitzan, Shmuel, ‘Electoral Outcomes with Probabilistic Voting and Nash Social Welfare Minima’, Journal of Public Economics, 15 (1981), 113–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Glazer, A., Grofman, B. and Owen, G., ‘A Model of Candidate Convergence Under Uncertainty About Voter Preferences’, Mathematical ModellingGoogle Scholar, forthcoming. In two dimensions for a fixed possibility frontier an ‘optimal’ location is guaranteed; in multiple dimensions in general there will be no core even when the voting game is restricted to points on the possibility frontier. Even in two dimensions, in general there will be no single candidate location that is optimal for all possibility frontiers.
14 Miller, Warren E. and Shanks, J. Merrill, ‘Policy Directions and Presidential Leadership: Alternative Interpretations of the 1980 Presidential Election’, British Journal of Political Science, 12 (1982), 299–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 It may also be the case that a candidate's expected performance can be anticipated as a function of the candidate's ‘true’ policy positions as distinct from those stated in order to maximize the likelihood of election. Some of what a candidate says must be taken as purely for ‘public consumption’. But which part?