When you watch the campaign for the next general elections in the United Kingdom, you may get the impression that the two biggest contenders, Ed Milliband and David Cameron are competing for the same voters. They promise this, they promise that in multiple attempts to convince what in political science jargon we call the “median voter”, that is, the person in the very middle of the voter distribution, the one that decides elections. In theory, this is how it works in majoritarian systems. In fact, it’s not.
In the theory, the median voter swings from one side to the other, depending on the promises made by the different parties (there is a movie with Kevin Costner about this). In a perfect bipartisan system, one vote lost for one party is a vote won for the other party. This means that the vote share of one party is more or less…
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