The Electoral Behaviour of the Median Voter and the ‘Paradoxes’ of Spanish Political Competition

Abstract

Focusing on the 2000, 2008 and 2011 Spanish elections, this paper
provides three contributions to the literature on electoral competition
from a Downsian perspective. Firstly, an answer is offered to the three
paradoxes that arise when applying the basic proximity vote model to
electoral competition in Spain. Secondly, a more solid theoretical and
empirical grounding is provided for the existing proposals to integrate
non-positional issues into the Downsian model. Finally, a type of
logistic regression is employed which is more appropriate for
understanding the behaviour of the median voter, whose role is crucial
in Spanish election results. Our fi ndings have important implications in
understanding the workings of one of the most commonly used
models in political science.