Should the democrats move to the left on economic policy?

arXiv:0807.4003v2 [stat.AP] 9 Dec 2013 The Annals of Applied Statistics 2008, Vol. 2, No. 2, 536–549 DOI: 10.1214/07-AOAS150 c ⃝Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 2008 SHOULD THE DEMOCRATS MOVE TO THE LEFT ON ECONOMIC POLICY?1 By Andrew Gelman and Cexun Jeffrey Cai Columbia University Could John Kerry have gained votes in the 2004 Presidential elec- tion by more clearly distinguishing himself from George Bush on eco- nomic policy? At first thought, the logic of political preferences would suggest not: the Republicans are to the right of most Americans on economic policy, and so in a one-dimensional space with party posi- tions measured with no error, the optimal strategy for the Democrats would be to stand infinitesimally to the left of the Republicans. The median voter theorem suggests that each party should keep its policy positions just barely distinguishable from the opposition. In a multidimensional setting, however, or when voters vary in their perceptions of the parties’ positions, a party can benefit from putting some daylight between itself and the other party on an issue where it has a public-opinion advantage (such as economic policy for the Democrats). We set up a plausible theoretical model in which the Democrats could achieve a net gain in votes by moving to the left on economic policy, given the parties’ positions on a range of issue dimensions. We then evaluate this model based on survey data on voters’ perceptions of their own positions and those of the candidates in 2004. Under our model, it turns out to be optimal for the Democrats to move slightly to the right but staying clearly to the left of the Republicans’ current position on economic issues. 1. Introduction. In the 2004 presidential election campaign, it has been suggested that voters saw little difference between the parties on economics but large differences on other issues. The Democrats are traditionally closer than the Republicans to the average voter’s view on the economy. Should the Democrats have moved to the left on economic issues? Could such a strategy win them votes? We study this using a theoretical model and survey data. Received November 2007; revised November 2007. 1Supported by U.S. National Science Foundation and the Columbia University Applied Statistics Center. Key words and phrases. Median voter, Presidential election, public opinion, spatial model of voting. This is an electronic reprint of the original article published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in The Annals of Applied Statistics, 2008, Vol. 2, No. 2, 536–549. This reprint differs from the original in pagination and typographic detail. 1 2 A. GELMAN AND C. J. CAI Fig. 1. Some possibilities in a one-dimensional spatial model: the curve indicates the opinions of voters on economic issues, and D and R show the positions of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. In all three pictures the Republicans are right of cen- ter. In (b), the Democrats are at the median voter; in (c), the Democrats are just barely to the left of the Republicans, thus optimizing their vote share if the Republicans are not free to move. (We are assuming here that the Republican position is fixed, perhaps because they are the incumbent party or perhaps because of strong policy preferences.) 1.1. Candidate positions and the median voter theorem. In a two-party system the median voter theorem states that it is in each party’s best in- terest to move toward the center (the median) of the distribution of voters [Hotelling (1929) and Downs (1957)]. If either party is not at the median, the other party has a winning strategy. For example, in Figure 1(a) the Repub- licans have a position to the right of the average voter. If the Democrats sit at the median [see Figure 1(b)], they will attract more than half the voters. But the Democrats will do even better by moving just infinitesimally to the left of the Republicans [see Figure 1(c)] and getting the votes of everyone to the left. This analysis ignores the possibility that the Republicans can also move (an issue to which we return in Section 4). If both parties are free to move to optimize their votes, they will converge to an equilibrium where they are both at the median. The median voter theorem is regularly falsified by actual data. Politi- cians regularly depart from the median [Poole and Rosenthal (1997)] de- spite there being clear evidence of an electoral benefit for having moderate positions [Gelman and Katz (2005)]. Legislators’ distances from the median have been found to be correlated with district characteristics [Gerber and Lewis (2004)]. There are many practical reasons for politicians to move away from the center. Ideological positioning is only one of the factors influencing election outcomes, and a candidate might well, for example, sacrifice an esti- mated 2% of the vote in order to be better positioned to implement desired policies in the event of an election victory. There are also other constituen- cie

…(Full text truncated)…

This content is AI-processed based on ArXiv data.