Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2008
Abstract
This article studies electoral competition in a model of redistributive politics with deterministic voting and heterogeneous voter loyalties to political parties. We construct a natural measure of `party strength' based on the sizes and intensities of a party's loyal voter segments and demonstrate how party behavior varies with the two parties' strengths. In equilibrium, parties target or `poach' a strict subset of the opposition party's loyal voters: offering those voters a high expected transfer, while `freezing out' the remainder with a zero transfer. The size of the subset of opposition voters frozen out and, consequently, the level of inequality in utilities generated by a party's equilibrium redistribution schedule is increasing in the opposition party's strength. We also construct a measure of `political polarization' that is increasing in the sum and symmetry of the parties' strengths, and find that the expected ex-post inequality in utilities of the implemented policy is increasing in political polarization.
Recommended Citation
Kovenock, Dan, and Brian Roberson. "Electoral poaching and party identification." Journal of Theoretical Politics 20.3 (2008): 275-302.
doi:10.1177/0951629808090136
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
The authors
Comments
This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Theoretical Politics, volume 20, issue 3, 2008 following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at DOI: 10.1177/0951629808090136