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This research note presents a median voter data set that allows for comparison across time and across countries. The data set updates and extends the widely used statistics originally developed by [Kim and Fording, 1998] and [Kim and Fording, 2003]. The median voter data introduced in this research note also correct for stochastic error in the Comparative Manifestos Project using work by and include estimates of measurement error. The methodology consists of linking party positions with electoral outcomes to arrive at revealed voter preferences. This data set provides insight into the median voter in over 50 democracies. For established democracies the time series typically starts around 1950. The United States time series begins in 1920 and includes the 2008 election. Descriptive graphs illustrate major trends in voter preferences. The median voter data set is made available online. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

Voter disenfranchisement occurs when people who have the right to vote are prevented from doing so. Students study its ugly history in the South but rarely learn about worrisome current examples of voter disenfranchisement. African American and Hispanic voters are much more likely to be told that they lack the correct identification to vote, have their names incorrectly removed from voting rolls, or learn that their polling place changed at the last minute. Additionally, individuals with criminal convictions face impediments to their right to vote. Many argue that this constitutes disenfranchisement, with fierce opinions on both sides of the issue. This must-have examines the scope of the problem and discusses recent efforts to stop this violation of civil rights.

PLURALITY ELECTORAL SYSTEMS WITH MULTI-MEMBER DISTRICTS AND SINGLE NONTRANSFERABLE VOTES ALLOW PARTIES TO WIN MULTIPLE SEATS IN DISTRICT ELECTIONS BY NOMINATING MULTIPLE CANDIDATES, BUT THEY ALSO PENALIZE A PARTY'S SEAT SHARE IF THE NUMBER OF CANDIDATES OFFERED IS TOO MANY OR TOO FEW. GIVEN AN INSTITUTIONAL INCENTIVE TO NOMINATE THE CORRECT NUMBER OF CANDIDATES, THE AUTHORS SEEK TO ESTABLISH THAT THE NOMINATING BEHAVIOR OF PARTIES IN SUCH SYSTEMS RESULTS FROM A RATIONAL CALCULUS OF STRATEGIC CHOICE. THEY DEVELOP AND TEST AN EMPIRICAL THEORY OF RATIONAL NOMINATING BEHAVIOR APPLIED TO JAPANESE DISTRICT ELECTIONS BEFORE THE 1994 ELECTORAL REFORM. THEY ESTABLISH, FOR ALL POSSIBLE NOMINATING STRATEGIES, THE CONDITIONS ON VOTING OUTCOMES REQUIRED FOR ACTORS TO MAXIMIZE BENEFITS IN THE CONTEXT.

Political parties represent operating in the State massive and stable organization of citizens united by a generality of political convictions and having as a main objective participation in system of national representation at formation and the subsequent realization of powers of elective public authorities and local government. The constitutional status of political parties is defined as the basic tool of participation of voters in political life. One of the basic junctions of political parties is maintenance of representation of various interests of various levels of population. From the constitutionally-legal point of view would be more correct to speak about legal guarantees of promotion of candidates (lists of candidates) from political parties and their participation in pre-election campaign, about possibilities to participate in distribution of mandates, and in the subsequent deputy activity about legal guarantees of participation in parliamentary debates and decision-making control at voting by the simple or qualified majority of votes of deputies. ; Political parties represent operating in the State massive and stable organization of citizens united by a generality of political convictions and having as a main objective participation in system of national representation at formation and the subsequent realization of powers of elective public authorities and local government. The constitutional status of political parties is defined as the basic tool of participation of voters in political life. One of the basic junctions of political parties is maintenance of representation of various interests of various levels of population. From the constitutionally-legal point of view would be more correct to speak about legal guarantees of promotion of candidates (lists of candidates) from political parties and their participation in pre-election campaign, about possibilities to participate in distribution of mandates, and in the subsequent deputy activity about legal guarantees of participation in parliamentary debates and decision-making control at voting by the simple or qualified majority of votes of deputies.

This paper shows a general nonparametric unfolding technique for maximizing the correct classification of binary choice or two-category data. The motivation for and the primary focus of the unfolding technique are parliamentary roll call voting data. However, the procedures that implement the unfolding also can be applied to the problem of unfolding rank order data as well as analyzing a data set that would normally be the subject of a probit, logit, or linear probability analysis. One aspect of the scaling method greatly improves Manski's "maximum score estimator" technique for estimating limited dependent variable models. To unfold binary choice data two subproblems must be solved. First, given a set of chooser or legislator points, a cutting plane must be found such that it divides the legislators/choosers into two sets that reproduce the actual choices as closely as possible. Second, given a set of cutting planes for the binary choices, a point for each chooser or legislator must be found which reproduces the actual choices as closely as possible. Solutions for these two problems are shown in this paper. Monte Carlo tests of the procedure show it to be highly accurate in the presence of voting error and missing data.

Plurality electoral systems with multi-member districts and single nontransferable votes (SNTV) allow parties to win multiple seats in district elections by nominating multiple candidates, but they also penalize a party's seat share if the number of candidates offered is 'too many' or 'too few'. Given an institutional incentive to nominate the 'correct' number of candidates, we seek to establish empirically that the nominating behaviour of parties in such systems results from a rational calculus of strategic choice. So we develop and test an empirical theory of rational nominating behaviour applied to Japanese district elections before the 1994 electoral reform. We establish, for all possible nominating strategies, the conditions on voting outcomes required for actors to maximize benefits in the context. The efficiency of actual strategy choices for maximizing benefits is found by comparing an observed outcome from voting (the distributed benefit) with the benefit that would be expected had the party chosen its 'best' alternative nominating strategy instead. Empirical testing indicates that Japanese parties discriminated between available nominating strategies and made choices that maximized benefits in the context,

evidence that the nominating behaviour of parties in this test environment was based on rational calculation.

Plurality electoral systems with multi-member districts and single nontransferable votes (SNTV) allow parties to win multiple seats in district elections by nominating multiple candidates, but they also penalize a party's seat share if the number of candidates offered it 'too many' or 'too few'. Given an institutional incentive to nominate the 'correct' number of candidates, we seek to establish empirically that the nominating behaviour of parties in such systems results from a rational calculus of strategic choice. So we develop and test an empirical theory of rational nominating behaviour applied to Japanese district elections before the 1994 electoral reform. We establish, for all possible nominating strategies, the conditions on voting outcomes required for actors to maximize benefits in the context. The efficiency of actual strategy choices for maximizing benefits is found by comparing an observed outcome from voting (the distributed benefit) with the benefit that would be expected had the party chosen its 'best' alternative nominating strategy instead. Empirical testing indicates that Japanese parties discriminated between available nominating strategies and made choices that maximized benefits in the context, evidence that the nominating behaviour of parties in this test environment was based on rational calculation. (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)

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

The trusts issue culminated in the passage of the Clayton Act in 1914, which conventional wisdom holds was a response to the perceived ineffectiveness of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Using ordered & multinomial logit analysis, we were able to detect economic interest variables that explain the senators' votes. The empirical findings strongly support the wealth transfer hypothesis, & the regression results clearly show that senators responded to interest groups. While we also found some support for the ideological perspective, it is clear that there was much more to the vote than the conventional story would suggest. 5 Tables, 2 Figures, 25 References. Adapted from the source document.

The battleground state is ubiquitous in the discourse and scholarship surrounding American presidential campaigns, but the concept remains poorly understood, measured, and operationalized. The nature of presidential geographic targeting carries potentially significant consequences for the nation's issue agenda, political institutions, and voter behavior, and this dissertation details the need to re-conceptualize the battleground state as both an explanatory and dependent variable if these consequences are to be better understood. Beginning with the 1960 presidential election, I use an original archival data set collected at the nation's presidential libraries to confront the myths that exist in both popular coverage and much of the existing political science literature about battleground states, and I work to correct the record. Media content analysis establishes the significant increase in attention paid to battleground strategies over time in the press. A conceptual analysis highlights both the stability and the evolution of the battleground state concept. The archival records reveal the presidential campaigns' multiple goals, the various geographic strategies adopted to meet those goals, and the elements campaigns use to prioritize geographic areas. The findings challenge many leading assumptions and expose misconceptions made about battleground strategies, and I suggest ways to improve our understanding of the concept. Next, a constitutive analysis using multiplicative interaction models explores the preconditions that guide campaign classification and campaign resource allocation patterns in presidential elections. This analysis demonstrates a fundamental shift in the factors that predict state battleground status and offers more evidence of why it is necessary to more rigorously conceptualize the battleground state. Finally, a causal analysis of the effects of the battleground state on voter evaluations of the candidates reveals the critical link between conceptualization and measurement validity. I demonstrate that different levels of measurement tell us very different stories about the causal processes of campaign effects, and I argue for the increased use of a categorical dummy variable to measure battleground status. Finally, using a block recursive model, I demonstrate that the inclusion of multiple campaign mechanisms and campaign classifications of the states in battleground effects models clarifies the direct effects of different strategies on voter behavior. In presenting these and other findings, I improve our understanding of the battleground state concept and enhance its usefulness as a tool for future research.

According to some influential interpretations, Rawls's later turn to political liberalism contributed significantly to the reorientation of contemporary normative political theory from justice to legitimacy – democratic legitimacy in particular. In this paper, I will not delve into whether these assumptions are correct. My main aim here is to show that we can already find the seeds of a later discussion concerning democratic legitimacy and democratic authority in A Theory of Justice. I will also defend the even stronger claim that Rawls's considerations on democracy in A Theory of Justice are still relevant, both to justify democracy and democratic authority, and for normatively justifying certain democratic decisionmaking procedures. Moreover, I argue that his discussion of the epistemic dimension of majority voting and public deliberation points in the direction of later theories of deliberative democracy and epistemic democracy.

Four pure types of legislative organization are characterized as data-generating processes for commonly used measures of preferences or, in the spatial vernacular, ideal points. The types of legislative organization are differentiated by their partisan versus nonpartisan nature of agenda formation, and by whether the amendment process is open or closed. For each organization, roll call voting data are Monte Carlo generated and used as input for four different ideal-point measures: standard percent-correct interest-group ratings; linear factor analysis scores; W-NOMINATE ratings; and Markov chain Monte Carlo measures. Three questions motivate and are addressed in the analysis. Do estimated ideal points differ significantly across forms of legislative organization? Are some ideal-point estimates consistently more accurate than others? Are there patterns of substantively relevant, persistent bias in ideal-point estimates? The answers are all affirmative.

We consider misconceptions about the functioning of the economy as one possible explanation for the emergence of crises in democracies. Furthermore, we study a political process which may lead to successful reform. First of all, we show that voters can make inefficient decisions concerning policy measures because of their insufficient recognition of indirect policy effects. Repeated voting on the basis of such incomplete economic views eventually leads to an economic crisis. Accordingly, the adoption of a correct view may trigger the reversal of a detrimental economic development. We ask whether this could be accomplished by platforms of political parties. Therefore, we analyze a signaling game between a governmental party and voters. We find that extreme reform proposals are particularly credible, and therefore might be the appropriate device for successful reform.