One way to measure the a priori voting power of the states in the U.S. Electoral College is to view it as a weighted voting system and calculate power indices of the states. However this does not take into account the fact that in a given presidential election some states are almost certain to vote for a particular candidates, nor does it allow for states to split their electoral votes between ...

It is known that multidimensional Downsian competition fails to admit an equilibrium in pure strategies unless very stringent conditions on the distribution of voters’bliss points are imposed (Plott 1967). This paper revisits this problem considering that the two vote share maximizing candidates are differentiated. That is, candidates strategically decide positions only in some of the n dimensi...

We consider a model of elections in which two office-motivated candidates are uncertain about the location of the median voter’s ideal point, and in which candidates receive private signals about the location of the median prior to taking policy positions. Assuming signal spaces are finite, we show that there is at most one pure strategy equilibrium and give a sharp characterization, if one exi...

This paper formulates and analyzes a general model of elections in which candidates receive private signals about voters’ preferences prior to committing to political platforms. We fully characterize the unique pure-strategy equilibrium: After receiving her signal, each candidate locates at the median of the distribution of the median voter’s location, conditional on the other candidate receivi...

Are politicians motivated by policy outcomes or by the perks of office? The answer to this question is central to understanding the behavior of office holders and the policies they produce. Despite the question’s importance, however, the existing literature is not well suited to provide an answer. To shed light on the issue of political motivations I exploit a basic fact: to hold office, one mu...

This paper studies the equilibria of a one-dimensional spatial model in which three candidates seek to maximize their probabilities of winning, are uncertain about the voters’ preferences, and may move whenever they wish. In the presence of enough uncertainty there is an equilibrium in which two candidates enter simultaneously at distinct positions in the first period and either the third candi...

Uncertainty pervades the electoral arena. Many voters are unsure about the issue positions of candidates, either because candidates are deliberately ambiguous or because voters fail to receive campaign messages. In theory, uncertainty a¤ects how voters make choices, which strategies candidates adopt, and who wins or loses elections. In practice, though, problems of measurement and endogeneity h...