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ifo Institut – Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universität München >
CESifo Working Papers, CESifo Group Munich >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/10419/55874
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| Title: | | Elites or masses? A structural model of policy divergence, voter sorting and apparent polarization in U.S. presidential elections, 1972-2008  |
| Authors: | | Krasa, Stefan Polborn, Mattias |
| Issue Date: | | 2012 |
| Series/Report no.: | | CESifo working paper: Public Choice 3752 |
| Abstract: | | One of the most widely discussed phenomena in American politics today is the perceived increasing partisan divide that splits the U.S. electorate. A central contested question is whether this diagnosis is actually true, and if so, what is the underlying cause. We develop a model that relates the parties' positions on economic and cultural issues, the voters' ideal positions and the electorate's voting behavior, and apply the model to U.S. presidential elections between 1972 and 2008. The model allows us to recover candidates' positions from voter behavior; to decompose changes in the overall political polarization of the electorate into changes in the distribution of voter ideal positions and consequences of elite polarization; and to determine the characteristics of voters who changed their party allegiance. |
| Subjects: | | polarization differentiated candidates policy divergence ideology voter migration |
| JEL: | | D72 |
| Document Type: | | Working Paper |
| Appears in Collections: | | CESifo Working Papers, CESifo Group Munich
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