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Candidate Equilibrium and the Behavioral Model of Voter Choice and Turnout: Theoretical Results and Empirical Tests
Unformatted Document Text:  Candidate Equilibrium and the Behavioral Model of Voter Choice and Turnout: Theoretical Results and an Empirical Test By James Adams and Samuel Merrill, III Abstract We present theoretical results that when voters are motivated by policy distance and partisan loyalties, and voters are prepared to abstain from alienation, then office- seeking candidates’ equilibrium positions in two-candidate contests diverge, with each candidate presenting policies that reflect the beliefs of her partisan constituency. We re- port empirical tests on U.S. Senate elections which support the central predictions derived from our model: namely, that Senate candidates’ policy divergence from the mean state voter position increases with the size and the extremity of their state partisan constituen- cies, and, crucially, that candidates gain votes as they shift away from the center of the pol- icy space, in the direction of their constituencies. Our analyses also uncover support for recent theories of policy competition put forward by Miller and Schofield, Moon, and Cal- lander and Wilkie. Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Ill., September 2-5, 2004.

Authors: Adams, James. and Merrill, Samuel, III.
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Candidate Equilibrium and the Behavioral Model of Voter
Choice and Turnout: Theoretical Results and an Empirical Test
By James Adams and Samuel Merrill, III
Abstract
We present theoretical results that when voters are motivated by policy distance
and partisan loyalties, and voters are prepared to abstain from alienation, then office-
seeking candidates’ equilibrium positions in two-candidate contests diverge, with each
candidate presenting policies that reflect the beliefs of her partisan constituency. We re-
port empirical tests on U.S. Senate elections which support the central predictions derived
from our model: namely, that Senate candidates’ policy divergence from the mean state
voter position increases with the size and the extremity of their state partisan constituen-
cies, and, crucially, that candidates gain votes as they shift away from the center of the pol-
icy space, in the direction of their constituencies. Our analyses also uncover support for
recent theories of policy competition put forward by Miller and Schofield, Moon, and Cal-
lander and Wilkie.
Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago,
Ill., September 2-5, 2004.


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