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WORKING PAPER
Rational Expectations Coordinating Voting in American Presidential and House Elections
Mebane, Walter R.Abstract I define a probabilistic model of individuals' presidential-year vote choices for President and for the House of Representatives in which there is a coordinating (Bayesian Nash) equilibrium among voters based on rational expectations each voter has about the election outcomes. I estimate the model using data from the six American National Election Study Pre-/Post-Election Surveys of years 1976--1996. The coordinating model passes a variety of tests, including a test against a majoritarian model in which there is rational ticket splitting but no coordination. The results give strong individual-level support to Alesina and Rosenthal's theory that voters balance institutions in order to moderate policy. The estimates describe vote choices that strongly emphasize the presidential candidates. I also find that a voter who says economic conditions have improved puts more weight on a discrepancy between the voter's ideal point and government policy with a Democratic President than on a discrepancy of the same size with a Republican President. Keywords Bayesian-Nash equilibrium congressional elections coordinating voting generalized extreme value model maximum likelihood Monte Carlo integration nonparametric policy moderation presidential elections probabilistic voting rational expectations retrospective voting spatial voting ticket splitting voter equilibrium File
Uploaded 07-08-1998 Document ID Number 297 |
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