Partisan Messages, Unconditional Strategies and Coordination in American Elections∗

Partisan Messages, Unconditional Strategies and Coordination in American Elections I use evolutionary models to study how partisan messages and cuing contribute to—or perhaps substitute for—strategic coordination by voters in American presidential elections. Cuing means imitating another voter’s strategy: a cue tells a voter what to do, not what to think. Using National Election Studies data from 1976–96 to simulate and estimate models of replicator dynamics shows that voters respond to messages from other voters who are partisans. About 70 percent of voters use an unconditional strategy, which means their vote decisions do not depend on their current evaluations of policies or other factors. About 30 percent of voters use a coordinating strategy that involves systematic attention to the separation of powers and to other voters. Voters seem to evaluate their strategies and make changes only sporadically. In most elections, what the coordinating voters do determines what happens.