Strategic Voting in Multi‐Office Elections

What are the incentives for voters to vote strategically when legislative policy outcomes are constrained by a system of checks and balances? The policy‐balancing theory supposes that moderate voters split their tickets because such splitting is the only way these voters can achieve moderate policy outcomes. I show that a different type of strategic voting, policy stacking, is characteristic of legislatures that endow the majority party with only limited institutional powers. Focusing on voting for the president and House of Representatives in the United States reveals that a substantial proportion of voters engage in policy‐stacking behavior, but very few engage in policy‐balancing behavior.