IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v96y2002i01p141-157_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Coordination and Policy Moderation at Midterm

Author

Listed:
  • MEBANE, WALTER R.
  • SEKHON, JASJEET S.

Abstract

Eligible voters have been coordinating their turnout and vote decisions for the House of Representatives in midterm elections. Coordination is a noncooperative rational expectations equilibrium. Stochastic choice models estimated using individual-level data from U.S. National Election Studies surveys of the years 1978–1998 support the coordinating model and reject a nonstrategic model. The coordinating model shows that many voters have incentives to change their votes between the presidential year and midterm after learning the outcome of the presidential election. But this mechanism alone does not explain the size of midterm cycles. The largest source of loss of support for the president's party at midterm is a regular pattern in which the median differences between the voters' ideal points and the parties' policy positions have become less favorable for the president's party than they were at the time of the presidential election (nonvoters show the same pattern). The interelection changes are not consistent with the theory of surge and decline.

Suggested Citation

  • Mebane, Walter R. & Sekhon, Jasjeet S., 2002. "Coordination and Policy Moderation at Midterm," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 96(1), pages 141-157, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:96:y:2002:i:01:p:141-157_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055402004288/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schelker, Mark, 2018. "Lame ducks and divided government: How voters control the unaccountable," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 131-144.
    2. Francesco Giovannoni & Daniel Seidmann, 2014. "Corruption and power in democracies," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(3), pages 707-734, March.
    3. Trebbi, Francesco & Weese, Eric & Wright, Austin L. & Shaver, Andrew, 2020. "Insurgent Learning," Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, now publishers, vol. 1(3), pages 417-448, August.
    4. Burkhart, Simone, 2008. "Blockierte Politik: Ursachen und Folgen von "Divided Government" in Deutschland," Schriften aus dem Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Köln, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, volume 60, number 60.
    5. Bruce Desmarais & Jeffrey Harden, 2014. "An unbiased model comparison test using cross-validation," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 2155-2173, July.
    6. Matthew C. Stephenson, 2013. "Does Separation of Powers Promote Stability and Moderation?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 331-368.
    7. Jim Granato & Melody Lo & M. C. Sunny Wong, 2010. "A Framework for Unifying Formal and Empirical Analysis," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 783-797, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:96:y:2002:i:01:p:141-157_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.