Returning to the theme of my pre-election entry, did the Liberal majority of seats result from the “median voter’s” swing (Downsian competition) or from strategic desertion of the third party (Duvergerian tendencies)? Of course, it can be both.
There was clearly a late swing from the NDP to the Liberals–maybe a little more than a couple of percentage points. This looks like strategic voting, not wanting to waste the vote, ensuring defeat of the incumbent by voting for the less-preferred challenger. In other words, Duverger. In fact, this process had been going on for a while, with the NDP slide and Liberal rise being quite correlated in the CBC poll tracker. Yet for most of the final two weeks or so, it seems as if the Liberals might have gaining mostly at the expense of the Conservatives. That still looks Downsian to me: the swinging of votes from incumbent…
View original post 421 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments