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A Note on Platform Choice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Extract

Various writers have developed models dealing with the problems facing a political party about to choose its election platform. 1 This Note shows, by means of a simple model, the importance that parties ought, in making this choice, to assign to a particular class of voters. This class consists of a subgroup of the usual ‘floating voters’ (i.e. those who change their vote from election to election). The subgroup consists of those among the floating voters whose votes may be influenced by their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the programs the parties adopt. Such voters may be designated ‘swing voters’. Whether or not such voters exist it is not the purpose of this Note to argue. Certainly political parties - in the importance they attach to their election manifestos and to the promises they contain - behave as though they believe they exist.

Type
Notes and Comments
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 Some of this is examined in Davis, O. M., Hinich, M. J. and Ordeshook, P. C., ‘An Expository Development of a Mathematical Development of the Electoral Process’, American Political Science Review, LXIV (1970), 426–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and more recent work appears in Part IV of Niemi, R. G. and Weisberg, H. F., Probability Models of Collective Decisions (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1972).Google Scholar

2 This is a reasonable form if deviations from the most preferred stand, on either side, are equally keenly felt by the individual. For an explanation of quadratic loss functions, see Davis, O. M. and M. J. Hinich, ‘A Mathematical Model of Policy Formation in a Democratic Society’, in Bernd, J. L., ed., Mathematical Applications in Political Science II (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1966).Google Scholar