A unified theory of voting [electronic resource] : directional and proximity spatial models / Samuel Merrill III, Bernard Grofman.

This book addresses the questions: how do voters use their own issue positions and those of candidates to decide how to vote?

Does a voter tend to choose the candidate who most closely shares the views of the voter or rather a candidate who holds more extreme views due to the fact that the voters discount the candidates' abilities to implement policy.

The authors develop a unified model that incorporates these and other voter motivations and assess its empirical predictions - for both voter choice and candidate strategy - in the US, Norway, and France.

The analyses show that a combination of proximity, direction, discounting, and party ID are compatible with the mildly but not extremely divergent policies that are characteristic of many two-party and multiparty electorates.

All of these motivations are necessary to understand the linkage between candidate issue positions and voter preferences.