Representative voter theorems

✍ Scribed by Paul Rothstein

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 879 KB
• Volume: 72
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0048-5829
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00123744

✦ Synopsis

The representative voter is an individual whose strict preference for any alternative x over any alternative y implies 1) x strictly defeats y by majority rule, if there are an odd number of voters, and 2) x weakly defeats y otherwise. This result holds for the median voter if x is his ideal point or if preferences satisfy a generalized symmetry property, but not in general. We examine a formal condition that guarantees the existence of a representative voter and an economic model in which this condition holds. We also indicate a method for estimating representative voting behavior that is justified when a representative voter exists, and compare this with a method for deriving median voting behavior from an estimated demand curve.