We study a two-party contest where candidates strategically allocate their campaign resources between two salient issues. We analyze to what extent the following indicators of a party's success predict the electoral victory: (1) the pre-campaign advantage, (2) the advantage on every salient...

Standard intuitions for optimal gerrymandering involve concentrating one's extreme opponents in "unwinnable" districts ("packing") and spreading one's supporters evenly over "winnable" districts ("cracking"). These intuitions come from models with either no uncertainty about voter preferences or...

Building on theoretical insights from research on the rentier state and the "resource curse," several studies have supported the argument that oil hinders democracy. However, previous research on the rentier state has neglected the global surge of multiparty autocracies or "electoral...