In many recent elections candidates of the major parties have been converging to the median voter in order to obtain more votes. These means that the candidates are beginning to move to the left or right on their political views to appeal to more of the voting population. This way the candidate will achieve more votes even though he or her has to change their position on certain issues in there campaign. The theorem implies that purely office-seeking candidates try to maximize their vote by adopting ideological positions to get as many voters as possible. (Morton p.93) In our two-person general election for president in November, the candidates should "converge" on the median voter position.
In the upcoming election voters will have to choice between the two candidates on Election Day. The theorem suggests that the vote will be most likely to vote for the candidate that is closer on the political spectrum.
1964 Republican presidential primaries
Election results by county. Lyndon B. Johnson Barr...
English: Senator Barry Goldwater.If two candidates are competing for an office, if they care only about winning, if voters have preferences shaped, the candidate will choose policy position equal to the median voter's ideal point. A candidate can see the importance of moving closer to middle ground with the mass of voters he doesn't appeal to. Morton 4 notes the increasing ideological distance of Republican from Democratic candidates. Since the ideological distance between the two it makes its hard to decipher where the median vote lies. This make it difficult for the candidate to decide where to sway their polices' to get more potential votes. First, they're not really sure where that median voter position is. Also all the voters don't know where the median is. (Renka Forum) This is because the median voter are also based on specifics of the voter such as age, gender, and ideology.(Congleton) Although...