A Valence Model of Elections and the Median-Crossing Property:A Diagrammatic Exposition

U of California, Economics Working Paper No. 499

17 Pages Posted: 30 Oct 2001

See all articles by Donald Wittman

Donald Wittman

University of California, Santa Cruz - Department of Economics

Date Written: October 2001

Abstract

Voters value candidate characteristics such as honesty and competence. These are known as valence issues. In this paper, we consider the situation where candidates may have more than one valence characteristic of importance to the voters. At the same time we introduce a new concept "the median-crossing property" which differs from single-peakedness and is less restrictive than the single-crossing property. If indifference curves satisfy the median-crossing property, then voting is transitive and the majority's preference rankings coincide with those of the median voter; if the indifference curves violate the median-crossing property, then intransitivity may arise.

Keywords: valence, median-crossing property, candidates, transitivity

JEL Classification: D7, D72

Suggested Citation

Wittman, Donald, A Valence Model of Elections and the Median-Crossing Property:A Diagrammatic Exposition (October 2001). U of California, Economics Working Paper No. 499, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=288985 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.288985

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