Competing for the Platform: How Organized Interests affect Party Positioning in the United States

What explains which groups are included in a party coalition in any given election cycle? Recent advances in political party theory suggest that policy demanders comprise parties, and that the composition of a party coalition varies from election to election. We theorize three conditions under which parties articulate an interest group?s preferred positions in its quadrennial platform: when groups are ideologically proximate to the party median, when groups display party loyalty, and when groups are flush with resources. Using computer-assisted content analysis on a unique and rich data source, we examine three cycles of testimony that 80 organized groups provided to the Democratic Party. The analysis compares group requests with the content of Democratic and Republican National Committee platforms in 1996, 2000, and 2004. Results show that parties reward loyal groups and those that are ideologically proximate to the party, but offer no confirmation of a resource effect

Voter turnout in a multidimensional policy space

Many factors influence the likelihood of citizens turning out to vote. In this paper we focus our attention on issue voting, that is, on the likelihood that different policies offered by politicians affect the probability of voting. If voters consider both the benefits and the costs of voting, rational voters will only vote when politicians offer differentiated policies. In a multidimensional policy space this implies that citizens only vote when they perceive enough difference on the issues they care about the most. We investigate the role of voter abstention due to indifference in a unidimensional and a multidimensional policy setting using data from the US National Election Studies for 1972-2000 and find support for our predictions: voters perceiving a small difference between the platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties are less likely to vote; and voters who perceive the two parties as more different on a larger number of issues are significantly more likely to vote.© 2010 Springer-Verlag