Most research on two-party elections has considered the   outcome as a single, dichotomous event: either one or the other party wins.   In this groundbreaking book, James Fowler and Oleg Smirnov investigate not   just who wins, but by how much, and they marshal compelling evidence that   mandates-in the form of margin of victory-matter. Using theoretical models,   computer simulation, carefully designed experiments, and empirical data,   the authors show that after an election the policy positions of both   parties move in the direction preferred by the winning party-and they move   even more if the victory is large. In addition, Fowler and Smirnov not only   show that the divergence between the policy positions of the parties is   greatest when the previous election was close, but also that policy   positions are further influenced by electoral volatility and ideological   polarization.

Mandates, Parties, and Voters: How Elections Shape the Future (Social Logic of Politics) PDF

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