James M Buchanan an American Economist and Nobel Laureate is often credited with coining the phrase politics without romance to describe public economics he used this phrase to emphasize that economic analysis of government policies must take into account the reality of political institutions and the self-interest of individuals and groups involved in the political process where many wish to apply ideologies or whimsical theories of political Behavior economists look again at the incentives decision makers face specifically we can apply economic theory to public Choice which is the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems in political science such as voting governing and political outcomes in other words we can use economics to help us predict who will win elections and what they'll do once they're in office the median voter theorem is a theory that predicts that in a two-party system the party that can capture the vote of the median voter will win the election the median voter is the voter whose preferences are exactly in the middle of the political Spectrum political ideologies tend to span a spectrum since the 18th century this political Spectrum has often been along the axis from left to right where those on the left are described as more liberal or Progressive and those on the right are described as more conservative the median voter is the person who falls exactly in the middle this is the person who will decide the outcome of the election and the winner will be whoever is proposing policies closest to the preferences of the median voter let's add some candidates to see how this works the candidates fit along the same axis and the voters will prefer the candidate who's closest to them on this ideological Spectrum all of these voters including the median voter are closest to the orange Party candidate while all of these voters are closest to the yellow Party candidate since the orange Party candidate has won a majority of the vote they will win this election what happens if we get different candidates if the orange party puts up someone more to the left they'll lose some voters these voters are now closer to the yellow Party candidate and then the orange Party candidate and so they'll swing their votes to Yellow but it doesn't really matter that this voter to the left of the median voter went for the yellow Party candidate even if they flipped back to Orange the yellow Party candidate is still the winner the median voter has the decisive vote in all elections between two candidates in the United States most of our elections are decided by who wins the most votes when we elect senators or Governors or state legislators usually it is a race between two candidates from the two major parties the median voter theorem predicts that the winner of those elections will be determined by the preferences of the median voter and this helps explain why candidates try to appeal to swing voters in the middle of the political Spectrum we can also apply the hoteling model to our analysis here remember that the hoteling model tells us that there will be two little product differentiation and firms will try to copy one another as best they can in an effort to capture a greater market share this Theory applies very well to political parties each trying to capture a majority of Voters the hoteling model would predict that candidates will try to move to the center and the differences in the policies they are proposing will get smaller is that true are Republicans and Democrats pretty much the same as each other not So Much Anymore over the past few decades the distance between the typical Republican and typical Democrat has gotten wider but this may be due to the incentives parties have given candidates through the nomination process while many people Express a desire for more than two parties the two-party system is a consequence of our winner take all voting system when there could be only one winner people vote strategically and someone who identifies more with a third party candidate might still vote for one of the major party candidates because they have a better chance of winning this strategic voting squashes third parties but voters on the edges still feel underrepresented majority party candidates tend to be centrists who can appeal to that median voter in the U.S in the mid-1970s primary elections became a more common way for political parties to select their candidates primaries allow voters to choose their Party's candidate rather than letting party insiders choose the median voter in each party would decide on the candidate and median voters within the party are closer to the edges of the political Spectrum this system of primaries has led to more differentiation between candidates which many interpret as political polarization an alternative to this system would be using proportional representation proportional representation award seats based on the party's vote share if a party wins 10 percent of the vote they would get 10 percent of the seats in the legislature in the U.S this would require some major changes to the Constitution so don't count on it happening but it can be interesting to think of the implications for our two-party system