American Politics & Public Policy Workshop: Mattias Polborn (U Illinois), “Political Competition in Legislative Elections”

“Political Competition in Legislative Elections”

Mattias Polborn, Deparment of Economics and Department of Political Science, University of Illinois

Abstract: We develop a theory of electoral competition predicated upon the notion that voters care both about their local candidates’ positions, and the positions of their parties, and that those party positions are in turn determined by the positions of the parties’ elected representatives in the legislature. We show that candidates may be unable to escape the burden of their party association, and that the primary voters in both parties exploit the median voters’ national preferences to nominate the most extreme electable candidates. We derive empirical implication for the analysis of gerrymandering and of representatives’ responsiveness to district opinion.

Speaker Bio: Mattias Polborn is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  His research focuses on models of political competition and voting, and was published in some of the top journals in economics and political science, including APSR, AJPS, JOP, AER and REStud. He is currently working, with Stefan Krasa, on a book project on political polarization.

Sponsored jointly by ISPS and CSAP