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	Probabilistic Voting Model	Spatial Voting Model
Ämnesområde	Political Economy	Political Science
Familj	MCDM	MCDM
Ursprungsår	1987	1957
Upphovsperson	Assar Lindbeck, Jörgen Weibull & Peter Coughlin	Harold Hotelling, Duncan Black & Anthony Downs
Typ	Formal model of electoral competition	Formal model of electoral and legislative choice
Ursprungskälla	Lindbeck, A., & Weibull, J. W. (1987). Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition. Public Choice, 52(3), 273-297.	Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Democracy. Harper & Row. ISBN: 9780060417505
Alias	Probabilistic Voting Theory, Lindbeck-Weibull Model, Coughlin Probabilistic Voting Model, Stochastic Voting Model	Spatial Theory of Voting, Downsian Model, Proximity Voting Model, Median Voter Model
Närliggande	4	4
Sammanfattning	The probabilistic voting model is a formal theory of electoral competition in which each voter's choice between two parties is treated as stochastic rather than deterministic, governed by a smooth probability that depends on the policy utilities the parties offer plus idiosyncratic and partisan preference shocks. Developed by Assar Lindbeck and Jörgen Weibull in 1987 and given its general treatment by Peter Coughlin in 1992, the model replaces the knife-edge switching of the median voter framework with continuous vote-share functions. Two office-seeking parties maximize expected vote share, and the resulting equilibrium maximizes a density-weighted social welfare function in which the most responsive — the swing — voters carry the greatest weight. Crucially, the model delivers a determinate, interior equilibrium even in multidimensional policy spaces where a Condorcet winner generically fails to exist.	The spatial voting model represents voters and political alternatives as points in a common geometric policy space and assumes that each voter supports the alternative nearest to their own ideal point. Rooted in Hotelling's location theory, Duncan Black's 1948 single-peakedness result, and Anthony Downs's 1957 economic theory of democracy, the model yields two foundational results: the median voter theorem, which identifies the equilibrium policy in one dimension, and the Downsian prediction that two vote-seeking parties converge toward the center. It is the workhorse formalism behind modern empirical estimation of political positions.