A Unified Theory of Voting: Directional and Proximity Spatial Models

Professors Merrill and Grofman develop a unified model that incorporates voter motivations and assesses its empirical predictions–for both voter choice and candidate strategy–in the United States, Norway, and France. The analyses show that a combination of proximity, direction, discounting, and party ID are compatible with the mildly but not extremely divergent policies that are characteristic of many two-party and multiparty electorates. All of these motivations are necessary to understand the linkage between candidate issue positions and voter preferences.