Measuring state power in presidential elections

✍ Scribed by Terrence J. Levesque

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1984
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 664 KB
• Volume: 42
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0048-5829
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00124948

✦ Synopsis

This essay describes a method that uses state voting records to calculate the probability that a state is pivotal in presidential elections. The method takes into consideration the changes in state voting patterns that occur at critical elections, and a separate power index is calculated for each period of stable state voting patterns. This results in a more descriptive measure of power when the resulting indices are compared with a similar index based on voting records from several different periods. * I wish to thank Howard Rosenthal, Peter Ordeshook, the editor, and the referees of the original version for their comments on this work.