This model also seems to rely on an assumption that there are more than two viable candidates, or that voters will refuse to vote at all rather than a candidate who supports 1⁄2 of their policy preferences.
If there were only two candidates and all voters chose whoever was closest to their policy preference, both would occupy the 20% block, since the extremes of the party would vote for them anyway.
But if there were three rigid categories and either three candidates, one per category, or voters refused to vote for a candidate not in their preferred category, then the model predicts more extreme candidates win.
I’m torn between the two for American elections, because:
The “correlated preferences” model here feels more true to life, psychologically.
Yet American politics goes from extremely disengaged primaries to a two-candidate FPTP general election, where the median voter theorem and the “correlated preferences” model seem to predict the same thing.
Voter turnout seems like a critically important part of democratic outcomes, and a model that only takes the order of policy preferences into account, rather than the intensity of those preferences, seems too limited.
Politicians often seem startlingly incompetent at inspiring the electorate, and it seems like we should think perhaps in “efficient market hypothesis” terms, where getting a political edge is extremely difficult because if anybody knew how to do it reliably, everybody would do it and the edge would disappear. In that sense, while both models can explain facets of candidate behavior and election outcomes, neither of them really offers a sufficiently detailed picture of elections to explain specific examples of election outcomes in a satisfying way.
This model also seems to rely on an assumption that there are more than two viable candidates, or that voters will refuse to vote at all rather than a candidate who supports 1⁄2 of their policy preferences.
If there were only two candidates and all voters chose whoever was closest to their policy preference, both would occupy the 20% block, since the extremes of the party would vote for them anyway.
But if there were three rigid categories and either three candidates, one per category, or voters refused to vote for a candidate not in their preferred category, then the model predicts more extreme candidates win.
I’m torn between the two for American elections, because:
The “correlated preferences” model here feels more true to life, psychologically.
Yet American politics goes from extremely disengaged primaries to a two-candidate FPTP general election, where the median voter theorem and the “correlated preferences” model seem to predict the same thing.
Voter turnout seems like a critically important part of democratic outcomes, and a model that only takes the order of policy preferences into account, rather than the intensity of those preferences, seems too limited.
Politicians often seem startlingly incompetent at inspiring the electorate, and it seems like we should think perhaps in “efficient market hypothesis” terms, where getting a political edge is extremely difficult because if anybody knew how to do it reliably, everybody would do it and the edge would disappear. In that sense, while both models can explain facets of candidate behavior and election outcomes, neither of them really offers a sufficiently detailed picture of elections to explain specific examples of election outcomes in a satisfying way.