Voting Behavior, Preference Aggregation and Tax Design

The empirical evidence on voting behavior suggests that the individuals’ choice of the vote is explained, among other things, by policy issues and the voters’ partisan preferences over the party that rules the government. The evidence also indicates that the voters’ partisan preferences are the best predictor of the choice of the vote (Republican and Democratic voters tend to vote, respectively, for the Republican and Democratic party), and that Democratic voters are the dominant coalition of voters in the American electorate. In this paper we show that these stylized facts can explain some features of the US tax policy: first, the divergence of the tax policies adopted by the Democratic and Republican parties. Second, Democratic administrations tend to adopt more pro low income redistributive tax policies than Republican administrations.