Maria Gallego

Competition for popular support: a valence model of elections in Turkey

Models of elections tend to predict that parties will maximize votes by converging to an electoral center. There is no empirical support for this prediction. In order to account for the phenomenon of political divergence, this paper offers a stochastic electoral model where party leaders or candidates are differentiated by differing valences—the electoral perception of the quality of the party leader. If valence is simply intrinsic, then it can be shown that there is a “convergence coefficient”, defined in terms of the empirical parameters, that must be bounded above by the dimension of the space, in order for the electoral mean to be a Nash equilibrium. This model is applied to elections in Turkey in 1999 and 2002. The idea of valence is then extended to include the possibility that activist groups contribute resources to their favored parties in response to policy concessions from the parties. The equilibrium result is that parties, in order to maximize vote share, must balance a centripetal electoral force against a centrifugal activist effect. We estimate pure spatial models and models with sociodemographic valences, and use simulations to compare the equilibrium predictions with the estimated party positions.

Empirical and Formal Models of the United States Presidential Elections in 2000 and 2004

This chapter develops a general stochastic model of elections in which the electoral response is affected by the valence (or quality) of the candidates. In an attempt to explain non-convergence of candidate positions in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections, a formal spatial stochastic model, based on intrinsic valence, is presented. A pure spatial model of the election is constructed. It is shown that the equilibria, under vote maximization, do indeed lie at the electoral origin. Other work on Presidential elections in the United States has suggested that a superior empirical model should incorporate the electoral perceptions of the candidate character traits. The chapter then considers a joint model with sociodemographic valences as well as electoral perception of traits and shows by simulation that the vote maximizing equilibrium positions were close to, but not precisely at, the electoral origin. This model used electoral estimates of the candidates.positions. These differed substantially from the estimated equilibria of the traits model. To account for this difference, a more general formal model is then considered where the valence differences between the candidates were due to resources that were contributed to the candidates by party activists. The trade off between activist and electoral support is given by a (first order) balance condition involving, called the centrifugal marginal activist pull. Survey information on party activists, who contributed resources to the candidates, was obtained. It is argued that the difference between the equilibrium obtained from the spatial model with traits, and the estimated candidate positions, is compatible with the location of these activists. The final model is one where the activist resources are used by candidates to target individual voters or groups of voters. The balance condition in this case involves a complex constrained optimization problem, that captures the essence of modern electoral politics.

The variable choice set logit model applied to the 2004 Canadian election

Formal work on the electoral model often suggests that parties should locate at the electoral mean. Recent research has found no evidence of such convergence. In order to explain non-convergence, the stochastic electoral model is extended by including a competence and socio-demographic valance in a country where regional and national parties compete in the election. That is, the model allows voters to face different sets of parties in different regions. We introduce the notion of a convergence coefficient, c for regional and national parties and show that when c is high there is a significant centrifugal tendency acting on parties. An electoral survey of the 2004 election in Canada is used to construct a stochastic electoral model of the election with two regions: Québec and the rest of Canada. The survey allows us to estimate voter positions in the policy space. The variable choice set logit model is used to built a relationship between party position and vote share. We find that in the local Nash equilibrium for the election the two main parties with high competence valence, the Liberals and Conservatives, locate at the national electoral mean and the Bloc Québécois, with the highest competence valence, locates at the Québec electoral mean. The New Democratic Party has a low competence valence but remains at the national mean. The Greens, with lowest competence valence, locate away from the national mean to increase its vote share.

Economic Performance and Leadership Accountability: An Econometric Analysis

Logit models of leadership duration test whether different agents are responsible for constitutional and unconstitutional transfers of power. Lagged values of per capita real investment have a significantly negative impact on unconstitutional transitions. This suggests that the elites of less developed countries determine the timing of unconstitutional transfers as they are the ones with investment capabilities. Lagged values of per capita real consumption are associated with the well-being of an average citizen. However, consumption exerts an unexpected positive influence on constitutional transitions when political regime differences are not taken into account. This significant effect disappears with the inclusion of parliamentary and presidential regime dummies.

Do parties converge to the electoral mean in all political systems

Many formal models suggest that parties or candidates should locate at the electoral mean. Yet, there is no consistent evidence of such convergence across political systems. Schofield’s (2007) Valence Theorem proves that when valence differences across parties are large, there is non-convergence to the mean. Convergence to the mean depends on the value of the convergence coefficient, c. When c is high there is significant centrifugal tendency acting on the parties and when c is low there is a significant centripetal tendency acting on the parties. In this paper we apply the stochastic valence model of elections in various countries under different political regimes and use the convergence coefficient of these elections to classify political systems. Our results show that the convergence coefficient varies across elections in a country, across countries using the same political system and across political regimes. For countries using proportional representation, namely Israel, Turkey and Poland, the centrifugal tendency is very high and parties move away from the mean. In the majoritarian polities of the United States and the UK, parties are located at the mean, as the centrifugal tendency is very low. In anocracies, the autocrat imposes limitations on how far from the origin the opposition parties can move but the equilibrium is fragile.

The Convergence Coefficient across Political Systems

Formal work on the electoral model often suggests that parties or candidates should locate themselves at the electoral mean. Recent research has found no evidence of such convergence. In order to explain nonconvergence, the stochastic electoral model is extended by including estimates of electoral valence. We introduce the notion of a convergence coefficient, c. It has been shown that high values of c imply that there is a significant centrifugal tendency acting on parties. We used electoral surveys to construct a stochastic valence model of the the elections in various countries. We find that the convergence coefficient varies across elections in a country, across countries with similar regimes, and across political regimes. In some countries, the centripetal tendency leads parties to converge to the electoral mean. In others the centrifugal tendency dominates and some parties locate far from the electoral mean. In particular, for countries with proportional electoral systems, namely, Israel, Turkey, and Poland, the centrifugal tendency is very high. In the majoritarian polities of the United States and Great Britain, the centrifugal tendency is very low. In anocracies, the autocrat imposes limitations on how far from the origin the opposition parties can move.

On the Ranking of Bilateral Bargaining Opponents

We fix the status quo (Q) and one of the bilateral bargaining agents to examine how shifting the opponent.s ideal point (type) away from Q in a unidimensional space affects the Nash and Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining solutions when opponents differ only in their ideal points. The results are similar for both solutions. As anticipated, the bargainer whose ideal point is farthest from Q prefers a opponent whose ideal is closest to her own. A similar intuitive ranking emerges for the player closest to Q when opponent\s preferences exhibit increasing absolute risk aversion. However, if the opponent\s preferences exhibit decreasing absolute risk aversion (DARA), the player closest to Q prefers a more extreme opponent. This unintuitive result arises for opponents with DARA preferences because the farther their ideal point is from Q, the easier they are to satisfy.

Modelling the Effect of Campaign Advertising on US Presidential Elections

We provide a stochastic electoral model of the US Presidential election. The availability of smart phone and social media coupled with large data set on voters’ personal characteristics and information has given candidates the ability to send messages directly to voters. In our model, candidates directly communicate with voters. Prior to the election candidates announce their policies and advertising campaigns. Voters care about candidates’ policies relative to their ideal policy and about the messages candidates sent relative to their ideal message frequency, called the campaign tolerance level. The electoral mean is a strick (weak) local Nash equilibrium (LNE) of the election if the expected vote shares of all candidates are greater than the sufficient (necessary) pivotal vote shares. The sufficient pivotal vote share rises when voters give greater weight to the policy or advertising dimensions. The necessary pivotal vote share may increase or decrease in the importance votes give to the policy or advertising dimensions. If the expected vote share of at least one candidate is lower than the necessary pivotal vote share, then the electoral mean is not a LNE of the election.

Intergovernmental negotiation, willingness to compromise, and voter preference reversals

A policy is the outcome of negotiations between two three-party parliamentary states. An election in jurisdiction A determines the composition of the legislature that selects a representative to negotiate an intergovernmental policy agreement with the representative from the legislature of jurisdiction B. Negotiations are modeled using Nash (Econometrica 18(2):155–162, 1950) bargaining framework. With heterogeneous parties, agreements and electoral outcomes depend on the concavity of the utility functions of negotiators and on the relative location of their ideal policies, i.e., depend on the negotiators relative willingness to compromise. Agreements between the bargainers may not follow the ordering of the parties’ ideal policies. An electoral outcome where support for the center party comes from extreme voters may emerge.

Modeling the effect of campaign advertising on US presidential elections when differences across states matter

We provide a stochastic electoral model of the US Presidential election where candidates take differences across states into account when developing their policy platforms and advertising campaigns. Candidates understand the political and economic differences that exist across states and voters care about candidates’ policies relative to their ideals, about the frequency of candidates’ advertising messages relative to their ideal message frequency, their campaign tolerance level, and vote taking into account their perceptions of candidates’ traits and competencies with their vote also depending on their sociodemographic characteristics. In the local Nash equilibrium, candidates give maximal weight to undecided voters and swing states and little weight to committed voters and states. These endogenous weights pin down candidates’ campaign and depend on the probability with which voters choose each candidate which depends on candidates’ policies and advertising campaigns. Weights vary across candidates’ policy and ad campaigns, reflecting the importance voters in each state give to the two dimensions and the variation in voters’ preferences across states.