Issues,the Spatial Theory of Voting,and British General Elections: A Comparison of Proximity and Directional Models

Competing spatial models of voter choiceare compared in the context ofparliamentary representatives selectedthrough single-member district, pluralityelections where party platforms areemphasized over individual candidates.Respondents of the 1987, 1992, and 1997British general election surveys ratepolitical parties on a series of issuescales. Ordered logistic regressions ofparty evaluations under proximity,directional, and mixed models reveal thatthe classic spatial model and thedirectional model perform equally well.Differences center on perceptions of thestatus quo, as voters appear to evaluatethe incumbent party (here, theConservatives) slightly differently thanminority parties (Labour and the LiberalDemocrats). The proximity model worksbetter for voter evaluations of governingparties while the directional model workswell for opposition parties.     

The proximity and the directional theories of issue voting: Comparative results for the USA and Germany

In several recent studies George Rabinowitz and his co–authors challenge the 'classical' spatial model of issue voting, the proximity model, by introducing a directional model. In this article we examine whether different measurement of perceived issue positions of candidates or parties leads to diverging judgments about the predictive power of the directional model (which is claimed to be empirically superior), as compared to the proximity model, using data from the USA and Germany. The results demonstrate that the measurement preferred by Rabinowitz et al. tends to bias empirical findings in favour of directional theory. If we use a more plausible operational definition of issue positions of candidates and parties the directional model in both countries fails to turn out superior.     

Constraint in European party activists' sympathy scores for interest groups

Abstract. This paper presents an analysis, country by country, of sympathy scores given by European party activists from 58 political parties in 11 countries of the European Community to more than 100 different national interest groups. In all countries but one, the left-right dimension is the predominant criterion for interpreting the sympathy scores given. In Belgium, the exception, a regional (Flemish-Walloon) cleavage line is most important. The analyses were performed with a new adapted version of the unidimensional Coombsian unfolding model. Bad fit to the unidimensional model is not remedied by postulating additional common dimensions, but by identifying and removing stimuli (interest groups) that do not conform to the unidimensional unfolding model. The nonrepresentability of these stimuli can be attributed to lack of agreement among activists about the location of these stimuli on the left-right dimension. More specifically, certain relatively popular stimuli are perceived by most respondents as close to their own location on the left-right scale, and, conversely, certain relatively unpopular stimuli are perceived by most respondents as distant from their own location.     

The proximity and the directional theories of issue voting: Comparative results for the USA and Germany

Abstract In several recent studies George Rabinowitz and his co–authors challenge the 'classical' spatial model of issue voting, the proximity model, by introducing a directional model. In this article we examine whether different measurement of perceived issue positions of candidates or parties leads to diverging judgments about the predictive power of the directional model (which is claimed to be empirically superior), as compared to the proximity model, using data from the USA and Germany. The results demonstrate that the measurement preferred by Rabinowitz et al. tends to bias empirical findings in favour of directional theory. If we use a more plausible operational definition of issue positions of candidates and parties the directional model in both countries fails to turn out superior.     

Alternative models of issue voting: The case of the 1991 and 1995 elections in Belgium

Abstract. Previous research has indicated that the success of the directional model of issue voting depends on levels of political sophistication and how party position is measured. Using 1991 and 1995 Belgian Election Surveys, the predictive power of proximity and directional measures are compared controlling for both variables. It is shown that when one uses overall mean placements, instead of mean placements by level of political sophistication, the proximity effect declines most among the highly sophisticated voters. The article also compares the performance of the proximity and directional measures across party systems. Contrary to theoretical expectations, party–system differences between Flanders and Wallonia do not affect the explanatory power of either of these measures. It is only in the cases of the liberal, socialist and extreme right parties that the directional measure is clearly superior. A closer analysis of this result indicates that the relative success of the directional measure is due to the limited number of issues from which those parties draw support.     

The conditional party mandate: A model for the study of mass and elite opinion patterns

Abstract.  This article explores the pattern of opinions within political parties. What is the level of issue congruence between voters and elected leaders? The article introduces two ideas for the analysis of mass and elite opinion patterns. First, the authors challenge the unidimensional conception of mass-elite linkages, and argue that the opinion structure of political parties may best be understood in the context of a multidimensional policy space. Second, they contest the proximity logic of the traditional party mandate model. In so doing, they propose the 'conditional party mandate model', arguing that 'direction' rather than 'proximity' attracts voters' interest and attention. The authors contend that in issues of principle significance for a particular party (so-called 'core issues'), the party's voters and representatives will proceed in the same direction, but the representatives will stress their position more strongly than the voters. In issues that are less significant to the parties, the relationship between the two levels will be fortuitous and less clear. The analyses, which are based on elite and mass survey data from the Norwegian political system, support the authors' hypotheses concerning positional issues. When the direction of an issue is given, representatives are more extreme than voters.     

Challenging business as usual? The rise of new parties in Spain in times of crisis

The two-party system in Spain collapsed in the aftermath of the Great Recession with the appearance of two new parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos. How are we to understand the sudden emergence of these new formations? Using 2015 and 2016 post-electoral survey data to map the ideological space and model voting behaviour, it is shown that economic voting is only part of the story. This article contends that the transformations in the Spanish party system are best understood through the prism of the crisis of representation that unfolded alongside the severe economic crisis. It is dissatisfaction with the political system that drives the vote for both new parties. The results also show that a unidimensional ideological structure and a generational divide cut across these critical attitudes. The young and politically dissatisfied are more likely to vote for new parties, each on different sides of the ideological spectrum.     

Party policy equilibrium for alternative spatial voting models: An application to the Norwegian storting

In recent years a lively debate has emerged concerning the empirical status of the traditional proximity spatial model versus a directional model of voter choice. The central reason for this scholarly interest concerns these models' contrasting implications for parties' policy positioning, with the directional model motivating parties to present extreme policies, but the proximity model promoting centrist positions. To this point, however, there exist no studies that compute parties' optimal strategies in historical elections, for these competing models. This article addresses this issue, by examining party policy strategies in a multiparty electorate for three different vote models: (a) the proximity model, (b) a directional model (c) a mixed model which combines proximity and directional components. Each model incorporates past voting history and the random effects of unmeasured variables. Using parameter estimates derived from analyses of survey data from the 1989 Norwegian Election Study we compute — for each of these vote models — the configuration of party policy positions that maximize each party's vote share in relation to those of the other parties. We find that for each model, such a vote–maximizing configuration exists, but — for the proximity model — represents an unrealistic, tightly clustered array. A mixed proximity–directional model, however, provides by far the most convincing account of parties' actual policy strategies with regard to dispersion and vote share.     

Party policy equilibrium for alternative spatial voting models: An application to the Norwegian Storting

Abstract In recent years a lively debate has emerged concerning the empirical status of the traditional proximity spatial model versus a directional model of voter choice. The central reason for this scholarly interest concerns these models' contrasting implications for parties' policy positioning, with the directional model motivating parties to present extreme policies, but the proximity model promoting centrist positions. To this point, however, there exist no studies that compute parties' optimal strategies in historical elections, for these competing models. This article addresses this issue, by examining party policy strategies in a multiparty electorate for three different vote models: (a) the proximity model, (b) a directional model (c) a mixed model which combines proximity and directional components. Each model incorporates past voting history and the random effects of unmeasured variables. Using parameter estimates derived from analyses of survey data from the 1989 Norwegian Election Study we compute — for each of these vote models — the configuration of party policy positions that maximize each party's vote share in relation to those of the other parties. We find that for each model, such a vote–maximizing configuration exists, but — for the proximity model — represents an unrealistic, tightly clustered array. A mixed proximity–directional model, however, provides by far the most convincing account of parties' actual policy strategies with regard to dispersion and vote share.     

Spatial models in voting advice applications

We examine the use of spatial models in Voting Advice Applications. A successful branch of VAAs uses multidimensional models of the political space to inform users of their policy match with political parties. Creators of these VAAs offer only a very generalized justification for the choice of their underlying spatial model. We examine whether these spatial representations offer a valid depiction of policy differences between parties. We compare the spatial models from the available national ‘electoral compasses’, which include established democracies as well as semi-authoritarian and transitional systems. We find that the two-dimensional ‘one-size fits all’ model that is used in all of these countries fails to accommodate significant variation between party systems.     

British parties and spatial competition: Dimensions of party evaluation in the 1992 election

Scholars of British politics traditionally characterize the electorate in terms of partisanship and social class. This paper suggests that ideology and issue preferences also enter into voter perceptions of British political parties and leadership. Using data from the 1992 British Election Study, the paper analyzes the factors that contribute to individual voters; perceptions of the Conservative and Labour parties. The 1992 election saw the major parties move toward the ideological center of British voters. Perceptions of political parties are found to be multidimensional and issue-oriented. A spatial model incorporating issue preferences and perceptions of party positions proves both empirically and theoretically richer than simple models of partisanship. The analysis of British voters complements earlier applications of the general spatial model in the context of the United States.     

A computational electoral competition model with social clustering and endogenous interest groups as information brokers

We extend the basic model of spatial competition in two directions. First, political parties and voters do not have complete information but behave adaptively. Political parties use polls to search for policy platforms that maximize the probability of winning an election and the voting decision of voters is influenced by social interaction. Second, we allow for the emergence of interest groups. These interest groups transmit information about voter preferences to the political parties, and they coordinate voting behavior. We use simulation methods to investigate the convergence properties of this model. We find that the introduction of social dynamics and interest groups increases the separation between parties platforms, prohibits convergence to the center of the distribution of voter preferences, and increases the size of the winning set.     

The effects of alternative power-sharing arrangements: Do “moderating” institutions moderate party strategies and government policy outputs?

Advocates of consensual political institutions, i.e. institutions that promote compromise and powersharing among political parties, claim that these institutions promote moderation in government policy outputs. To date, however, there exists little research – either theoretical or empirical – that evaluates whether consensual institutions promote moderation in parties' policy declarations. We develop a multiparty spatial model with policy-seeking parties operating under proportional representation, in which we vary the extent to which government policies reflect power-sharing among all parties as opposed to being determined by a single party. We determine parties' optimal (Nash equilibrium) policy positions and conclude that power-sharing does not typically motivate parties to moderate their policy declarations; in fact, policy positioning under power-sharing appears to be similar to or more extreme than under single-party dominance. Consistent with previous research, however, we find that power-sharing does promote moderation in government policy outputs. Our results have implications for parties’ election strategies, for the design of political institutions, and for representative government.     

Jenseits von Distanz und Richtung. Die Verbundmessung von Politikpräferenzen im Vergleich mit dem Distanz- und dem Richtungsmodell des Wählens — Empirische Befunde eines Methodenexperiments

The analysis of issue voting is of central importance in empirical electoral research. In this context, policy positions of voters and parties are normally surveyed by means of bipolar policy scales developed within the spatial model of voting. Even if such policy scales are widespread, their use can be criticised for a series of theoretical and methodological reasons. Beyond this background, conjoint measurement of policy preferences is presented as an alternative mode of operationalization. Using data from a methodological experiment it is shown that (full profile) conjoint measurement is superior to the use of traditional policy scales in the proximity and the directional model of voting.     

It's all relative: Spatial positioning of parties and ideological shifts

The usefulness of the general class of spatial econometric models, which relaxes the assumption that the observations are independent, has only recently been realised. One particularly fruitful application includes models of parties' ideological change as well as the electoral consequences of party competition. In these studies, scholars can explicitly model the spatial interconnectedness of political parties in theoretically pleasing ways, producing inferences that are consistent with formal models of party competition, but are beyond the grasp of traditional ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models. To illustrate these benefits, this article replicates Adams and Somer‐Topcu's 2009 study of parties' responses to ideological shifts by rival parties to show that appropriately modeling patterns of interconnectivity between parties via weights matrices provides more realistic inferences that are more consistent with formal models of party competition.     

A Comparative Spatial Analysis of European Party Systems*

This article examines mass perceptions of political parties in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany, the Netherlands and France. For each country we construct a map in which the parties, voters, and demographic groups are located to provide a visual and spatial overview of the structure of electoral competition. Two dimensions are adequate for displaying the main ideological cleavages in each of the countries. In each case there is a strong left-right dimension combined with a more culturally defined and usually weaker second competitive dimension. In general, we find that no parties occupy the center areas of the space, which are usually dense with voters. This leads us to question the adequacy of the traditional spatial model of elections for describing competition in multiparty systems.     

Do parties perceive their voter potentials correctly? Reconsidering the spatial logic of electoral competition

Political parties strive for maximizing their vote shares. One way to achieve this goal is to attract voters from competitors. A precondition for strategies aiming at attracting these voters is that parties perceive their voter potentials among their rivals' electorates correctly. Yet, hardly anything is known about such perceptions. To fill this gap, we develop analogue measures of a party's perceived and its actual voter potential for each competitor in a party system. Combining elite and mass surveys conducted in Germany, we show that perceived and actual voter potentials depend on spatial considerations but also that not all parties are able to correctly evaluate their potentials. These deviations can be traced back to differences in the perceived placement of political actors between elites and citizens. This supports the spatial logic of party competition but it also points to potential pitfalls for strategic behavior of political parties.     

Issue news and electoral volatility

Abstract. This article shows that issue coverage in the media partly explains both the political landslide at the 1994 elections in the Netherlands and the political continuity in the 1994 elections in Germany. Theories of issue voting guided the research. Issue ownership theory maintains that voters will remember which party has the best record of solving problems in emphasized issue areas. Proximity models and directional models suggest that voters' own issue positions will be compared to the perceived issue positions of parties. A longitudinal content analysis of ten newspapers and five television news programmes was performed to ascertain selective issue emphasis and the issue positions attributed to parties. Election outcomes and weekly opinion polls were used to measure the volatility of the vote.     

Ideology and candidate evaluation

How does the expressed political ideology of voters influence their evaluation of presidential candidates? The classic answer to this question is provided by the spatial theory of electoral choice in which utility for a candidate is a function of the proximity between the voter and candidate positions on the liberal-conservative continuum. We have argued elsewhere that spatial theory, while intellectually appealing, is inadequate as an empirical model of mass behavior. We have developed a directional theory of issue voting that we believe provides a more realistic accounting of how specific policy issues influence utility for a candidate. Directional theory is based on the view that for most voters issues are understood as a dichotomous choice between two alternative positions. While ideology is widely understood as a continuum of positions, the directional model can be applied to the relationship between ideology and candidate evaluation. In this paper we compare the two theories using National Election Study data from 1972 to 1988. The results tend to favor the directional model over the traditional proximity model. We conclude by briefly tracing out the implications of this finding.     

Multiparty electoral competition in the Netherlands and Germany: A model based on multinomial probit

A typical assumption of electoral models of party competition is that parties adopt policy positions so as to maximize expected vote share. Here we use Euro-barometer survey data and European elite-study data from 1979 for the Netherlands and Germany to construct a stochastic model of voter response, based on multinomial probit estimation. For each of these countries, we estimate a pure spatial electoral voting model and a joint spatial model. The latter model also includes individual voter and demographic characteristics. The pure spatial models for the two countries quite accurately described the electoral response as a stochastic function of party positions. We use these models to perform a thought experiment so as to estimate the expected vote maximizing party positions. We go on to propose a model of internal party decision-making based both on pre-election electoral estimation and post-election coalition bargaining. This model suggests why the various parties in the period in question did not adopt vote maximizing positions. We argue that maximizing expected vote will not, in general, be a rational party strategy in multiparty political systems which are based on proportional representation.