A Citizen-Candidate Model with Sequential Elections

This article develops a citizen-candidate model with sequential elections. The model highlights the strategic considerations associated with the primary process, which hinge on the preferences of party members, in particular the party medians and the party boundaries. It is shown that although electoral competition leads to convergence in platforms, the primary process limits such convergence. Intuitively, this results from candidates having to please two different sets of citizens in successive races (party members in the primary and the electorate as a whole in the general election).