results are consistent with the observation of polarized platforms and moderate policies, and the alienation and indifference …Recent studies of American politics evidence that political polarization of both the electorate and the political elite … have moved 'almost in tandem for the past half century' (McCarty et al., 2003, p.2), and that party polarization has …

The classical literature on spatial majority voting postulates that all citizens vote. The Median Voter Theorem (MVT … ideological. This paper introduces abstention, a simple yet realistic modification. We show that the main features of the MVT …

and without abstention. Finally, strategic voting (voting for the least preferred alternative) is common for a fraction of …This paper analyzes a two-alternative voting model with the distinctive feature that voters have preferences over the …

while others favor its continuation in stronger form. We offer an explanation of such polarization, based on a natural …

while others favor its continuation in stronger form. We offer an explanation of such polarization, based on a natural …

abstention and voting observed in the data? To answer these questions, we propose and estimate, using individual-level data on … President than for Congress). This paper addresses two main questions: (1) To what extent is split-ticket voting the natural … voting choices in presidential and congressional elections from 1972 to 2000, a unified model of turnout and voting with …

of voting behavior. In this model, an individual selects a ballot that makes as close a statement as possible to her … ideal point, where abstaining from voting is a possible (null) statement. We show that in such a model, a political system … that adopts approval voting may be expected to enjoy a significantly higher rate of participation in elections than a …

We study abstention when each voter selects the quality of information. We introduce conflict among committee members … utility). Our main result is that information and abstention need not be negatively correlated and, for some particular voters …

information and preferences that vary both in terms of ideology and intensity. In contrast to all other models of voting with … endogenous information, in equilibrium voters collect information of different qualities. We show that information and abstention …