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In most states it is permitted to write in the names on the ballot, and these write-in candidates can win if they assemble enough votes. Thus, in all elections in which I might conceivably participate, there are at least three candidates: the Republicans, the Democrats, and my own favorite candidate for president—Gordon Tullock. Indeed, using the notation of the Ferejohn and Fiorina article, assuming that we are talking about 1972, I would find k having a value of about .001. Under the circumstances, if I understand the article correctly, I should always vote, and the vote should always take the form of writing in my own name. Further, as far as I can see, this advice can be generalized. Everyone who would really like to be president should vote and write in his own name, because the minimum regret that they produce for three-candidate elections is also correct for the elections in which there are 30 million candidates. The only problem here is that it would, of course, amount to participating in a lottery, and my possible gain from writing in my own name might turn out to be less than the cost of writing it in. Granted that people are willing to buy lottery tickets, even when the various states offering them take very substantial rakeoffs, I do not imagine this would be much of a disadvantage.This same conclusion could have been deduced from the Casstevens article, which Ferejohn and Fiorina quite properly criticize as being mathematically incorrect.

This paper develops several simple multivariate statistical models and applies them to explain fluctuations in the aggregate vote for the United States House of Representatives, over the period 1896-1964. The basic hypothesis underlying these models is that voters are rational in at least the limited sense that their decisions as to whether to vote for an incumbent administration depend on whether its performance has been "satisfactory" according to some simple standard. Because of data limitations, the analysis focuses on measures of economic performance, treating other aspects of an incumbent's performance, such as its handling of foreign affairs, as stochastic perturbations of the underlying relationship to be estimated. (Examination of residuals suggests this assumption is not unreasonable, at least during peacetime.) Possible effects of coattails from presidential races, of incumbency, and of secular trends in the underlying partisanship of the electorate are also taken into account. The models, estimated by maximum-likelihood methods, are found to be successful. Close to two-thirds of the variance in the vote series is accounted for, and the structural coefficients of the models are of the correct signs and of quite reasonable magnitudes. Economic growth, as measured by the changes in real per capita income, is the major economic variable; unemployment or inflation have little independent effect. Presidential coattails are also found to be of some importance.

IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE HIS POLICY GOALS, THE PRESIDENT MUST PERSUADE CONGRESS TO SUPPORT HIS PREFERENCES. RICHARD NEUSTADT (1960) SUGGESTS THAT THE PRESIDENT'S TASK IS EASED CONSIDERABLY IF HE IS POPULAR WITH THE PUBLIC. MORE RECENT QUANTITATIVE STUDIES TEND TO SUPPORTS NEUSTADT'S CONCLUSIONS (EDWARDS 1976, 1977, 1980; BOND AND FLEISHER 1980). ALTHOUGH THE FINDINGS OF THESE STUDIES HAVE GAINED WIDE ACCEPTANCE, MAJOR CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FLAWS IN THE ANALYSES RAISE DOUBTS ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC OPINION AS A SOURCE OF PRESIDENTIAL INFLUENCE IN CONGRESS. THE PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER IS TO REEXAMINE THE LINK BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT'S POPULARITY WITH THE PUBLIC AND THE SUCCESS OF HIS POLICY PREFERENCES IN CONGRESS USING A RESEARCH DESIGN THAT CORRECTS SOME OF THE MAJOR PROBLEMS IN PREVIOUS STUDIES. THE PAPER IS DIVIDED INTO FOUR SECTIONS. THE FIRST SECTION REVIEWS AND CRITIQUES PAST RESEARCH ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PUBLIC OPINION AND PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESS IN CONGRESS. THE SECOND SECTION DESCRIBES THE DATA AND MEASURES USED IN OUR ANALYSIS. THE THIRD SECTION PRESENTS RESULTS INDICATING THAT THE EFFECT OF PUBLIC OPINION ON PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESS IN CONGRESS IS MORE LIMITED THAN PREVIOUS WORK WOULD SUGGEST, WHILE THE FINAL SECTION OFFERS CONCLUSIONS AND POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS OF THE LIMITED INFLUENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION ON PRESIDENTIAL-CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS.

In most referenda, only two alternatives are used ( «yes» and «no»). In this article, the possibility to find procedures for three and more alternatives is discussed.The Swiss voting system for the revision of the constitution is not logically correct. Most procedures used in Swiss cantons are not either. Voting systems with two rounds, with points, or based on a relative majority are not defendable too. Nevertheless, a workable and logically correct procedure for 3 alternatives exists.Using 4 of more alternatives is only possible in case of single-peakedness or some kinds of value-restrictedness. When this is not the case, systems which are logically correct, are getting too complex to be workable.

About 15% of Norwegian voters report a different party than their actual choice when asked about voting at previous Storting elections. Even though this percentage is lower than in other countries, it nonetheless shows that recall‐data do not give a correct picture of people's voting behavior. The political stability among voters is exaggerated. This will have consequences for the monthly political barometers on account of the weighing procedures used. This article discusses different explanations for erroneous recall; incorrect remembering on the one hand and a wish for consistent behavior on the other. The consistency model appears to be most relevant. In this connection the distinction between stable and unstable voters is important.

Philip E. Converse has proposed that party identification is intensified through a process of reinforcement, ie, repeated voting in accord with that identification; it follows that party identification increases in intensity as individuals age. Others have proposed that voters' partisan strength is a function of the character of the political environment in their youth, ie, that a highly charged political environment leads to intensified partisanship. These two hypotheses imply the same cross-sectional patterns in current survey data. Cohort analyses falter on the identification problem. Therefore, other implications must be examined. Most females born before 1899 have had fewer opportunities to reinforce a party tie through voting experience than males of similar age. Thus if Converse is correct, the partisan strength of males born before 1899 should exceed that of females of the same age. However, since these males & females shared the same political environment, if Converse's critics are correct, their partisan intensity should be equal. On the bases of survey data from the 1952-1964 period, these implications were tested; only marginal differences were found between males & females born before 1899. These results are supportive of a generational explanation of partisan strength. 2 Tables, Modified AA.

An attempt to rationalize policy outcomes in voting bodies has been made by Rae and Taylor (this Journal, 1 (1971), 71–90). In that work the assumption is made that all voters' preferences are representable by 'city block' type utility functions. The principal result obtained in that case by the writers is that for an odd number of voters there is always a unique equilibrium point under simple majority rule, independent of the distribution of individual optimal points and independent of the dimension of the policy space. Unfortunately, the Rae and Taylor result is not correct. In particular their result holds for a one or two dimensional policy space but not in cases where the policy space has three or more dimensions. The proof given by Rae and Taylor is correct for n = 2 but is false for n ≥ 3.

In his Economic Theory of Democracy, Anthony Downs reached the conclusion that voting is usually an irrational act. Given that voting is costly in time and effort involved in getting to the polls and making a decision and given that the probability any one voter can affect the outcome diminishes very rapidly as the number of voters increases, it appears that a rational, utility-maximizing citizen will most probably abstain. Only if the citizen perceives a phenomenally large difference between (or among) the candidates or if the number of voters is small will he go to the polls.Empirically, however, we know that substantially more than half of all eligible voters go to the polls in American presidential elections where the probability of any one voter's affecting the outcome is smaller than in any other election. If Downs is correct, at least half of the American electorate is irrational. But of what validity is a rational choice theory which characterizes most individuals as irrational? For this reason, theorists have attempted to modify Downs's theory so as to allow it to better explain why some rational citizens vote while others abstain.

Consider a group of people confronted with a dichotomous choice (ie, a yes or no decision). Assume that each person can be characterized by a probability, pi, of making the better of the two choices open to the group, such that "better" is defined in terms of some linear ordering of the alternatives. If individual choices are independent, & if the a priori likelihood that either of the two choices is correct is 50%, it is shown that the group decision procedure that maximizes the likelihood that the group will make the better of the two choices open to it is a weighted voting rule that assigns weights formulaically, as described. The implications for optimal group choice of interdependencies among individual choices are examined. 82 References. Modified HA

TO WHAT EXTENT IS A GOVERNMENT'S LEGITIMACY AFFECTED BY THE REGIONAL BREADTH OF ITS SUPPORT? IN THE 1983 BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT WAS RETURNED TO OFFICE WITH A LARGE OVERALL MAJORITY IN THE COMMONS, BUT THERE WERE CONSIDERABLE REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN THE EXTENT OF ITS SUCCESS. THE CONSERVATIVES WON 70% OF THE ENGLISH SEATS BUT ONLY 37% OF THE SEATS IN WALES, 29% IN SCOTLAND AND NONE IN NORTHERN IRELAND. WITHIN ENGLAND THE CONSERVATIVES WON 86% OF THE SEATS IN THE SOUTH AND 70% IN THE MIDLANDS, BUT JUST 41% IN THE NORTH. THE EXISTENCE OF SUCH MARKED REGIONAL VARIATIONS IN THE LEVEL OF THE GOVERNMENT'S SUCCESS RAISES THE SPECIFICALLY TERRITORIAL ASPECT OF THE GENERAL QUESTION OF HOW FAR IT IS DESIRABLE FOR POLITICAL PARTIES, AND A GOVERNMENT PARTY IN PARTICULAR, TO HAVE BREADTH OF SUPPORT AS WELL AS DEPTH. THE PRINCIPLE OF MAJORITY RULE MEANS THAT "A MAJORITY OF ONE IS ENOUGH", BUT GOVERNMENT NORMALLY SEEK MORE THAN JUST A BARE MAJORITY. TO DISRAELI'S OBSERVATION THAT "A MAJORITY IS THE BEST REPARTEE" CAN BE ADDED THE RIDER THAT "A MAJORITY THAT IS LARGE AND BROADLY-BASED IS THE BEST REPARTEE OF ALL". CERTAINLY, DURING 1983 ELECTION CAMPAIGN THE PRIMKE MINISTER INDICATED THAT SHE ECT SOUGHT AS COMPREHENSIVT A VICTORY AS POSSIBLE AND WAS QUICK TO CORRECT THE (THEN) FOREIGN SECRETARY WHEN HE SUGGESTED THAT A LANDSLIDE WIN WAS NOT NECESSARILY DESIRABLE BECAUSE OF THE STIMULUS IT COULD GIVE TO TO BACKBENCH DISSENT.

Higher levels of urbanization, social diversity, & voter turnout have long been theorized as factors promoting political competition. Previous empirical evidence on these relationships, however, has been inconsistent mostly due to the methodological limitations & the lack of comparability of the studies. To correct for earlier shortcomings, data were collected for all US congressional districts (N=436) on the 1972 races for elections to the US House of Representatives, US Senate, the presidency, & state governorships. Political competition was measured by computing the runner-up's vote proportion as a % of the winner's vote proportion; urbanization was the proportion of people residing in central cities of 50,000 or more population; & social diviersity was the SE, racial, & community mix of a district as computed from Lieberson's index of population diversity. Controls were instituted for district X income, minority level, homeownership level, & geographic location. Multiple regression analysis revealed that diversity was related to competition in a positive direction for races to the Senate, presidency, & governorships; turnout was positively related to the competition to the House & the presidency but was negatively related to the governorships; & urbanization was related only to presidential competition, in a positive direction. Major conclusions were that the manner in which ecological factors influence competititon is highly specific to the particular race concerned, & that ecological factors are not very important for competition because on the average they accounted for only 18% of the variance in competition. 2 Tables. AA.