No Evidence on Directional vs . Proximity

The directional and proximity models o er dramatically di erent theories for how voters make decisions, and fundamentally divergent views of the supposed microfoundations on which vast literatures in theoretical rational choice and empirical political behavior have been built. We demonstrate here that the empirical tests in the large and growing literature on this subject amount to theoretical debates about which statistical assumption is right. The key statistical assumptions have not been empirically tested, and indeed turn out to be e ectively untestable with existing methods and data. Unfortunately, these assumptions are also crucial since changing them leads to di erent conclusions about voter decision processes.