Electoral Competition with Entry

Abstract

By extending the established theoretical models of electoral competition with entry (eg. Palfrey (1984)) to incorporate simultaneous competition for multiple districts I produce a unique two party equilibrium under plurality rule with non-centrist party platforms. This equilibrium also precludes entry of additional parties. This result is used to provide a domain for which Duverger's Law could be expected to apply. I also present new results under the run-o_ rule for both the single district and multiple district frameworks. In the single district case I find that for the run-off rule the model is more consistent with empirical observation than it is for the plurality rule, but that this performance is reversed when we consider multiple districts. The paper also sheds some light on how the different levels of elections in the U.S. and other systems relate to each other.

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