Bandwagon, underdog, and political competition: The uni-dimensional case

The present paper studies the Hotelling-Downs and Wittman-Roemer models of two-party competition when voter conformism is present and the policy space is uni-dimensional. We consider two types of voter conformism, bandwagon and underdog, and study their effects on the political equilibrium of the two models. Even if voter conformism is present, the Hotelling- Downs parties propose an identical policy at the equilibrium, which is equal to a strict Condorcet winner. Thus voter conformism, both bandwagon and underdog, has no effect on the Hotelling- Downs political equilibrium. In the Wittman-Roemer model, parties propose differentiated equilibrium policies, and the extent of such policy differentiation depends on the degree of voter conformism. In general, the stronger the bandwagon effect is, the more differentiated the equilibrium policies are. The opposite holds when the underdog effect is present; an increasing underdog effect mitigates the policy differentiation of the two parties, although the effect is not large. We also find multiple Wittman-Roemer equilibria when the bandwagon effect is sufficiently strong. JEL Categories: D3, D7, H2