This paper studies two widely used models of political competition – citizen-candidate and probabilistic voting – to investigate the impact that asymmetries in single-peaked preferences have on two-party electoral competition. In a two-candidate equilibrium of the citizen–candidate model,...

In this paper, we analyze the political consequences derived from policy preferences which are non-symmetric around the peak. While the assumption of symmetric preferences is innocuous in political equi- libria with platforms convergence, it is not neutral when candidates are differentiated....

We study the political consequences of policy preferences which are non-symmetric around the peak. While the usual assumption of symmetric preferences is innocuous in political equilibria with plat-forms convergence, it is not neutral when candidates are differentiated. We show that a larger...

We introduce two natural types of asymmetric single-peaked preferences, which we name biased-above and biased-below, depending on whether the asymmetry (or preference-bias) favors alternatives above or below the peak. We define a rich family of utility functions, the generalized distance-metric...

The top-two primary is the new primary system passed in several states of the US that creates a single ballot in which the top two vote getters pass to the general election. Primary elections induce a sequential game with three stages: the candidate-entry stage, the primary election stage, and...

Parliamentary elections to the Basque Autonomous Community have a stable multi-party system that regularly produces long-lived minority and coalition governments. More amazing still, this stable party system arises in the context of a complex social and political setting in which the society...

We present a framework to analyze the relative importance of issues for the electorate. We distinguish two concepts -- issue salience and issue divisiveness -- and present those in the context of the multidimensional spatial model. Issue salience, which is widely studied in empirical and...

The top-two primary recently approved in states like Washington, California, and Alaska eliminates the closed party primaries and creates instead a single ballot in which the first and second place winners pass to the general election. We compare the electoral consequences of the top-two primary...

We explore to what extent we can propose fixed negotiation rules as well as simple mechanisms (or protocols) that guarantee that political parties can form stable coalition-governments. We analyze the case where three parties can hold office in the form of two-party coalitions. We define the...

We incorporate the media priming effects to explain how politicians can affect voters preferences on issues during the political campaign. We adapt well-known terms of international trade, such as absolute advantage and comparative advantage, to the context of parties' competition in political...