DIRECTIONAL AND PROXIMITY MODELS OF VOTER CHOICE IN RECENT US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

This note evaluates relative ability of the proximity and recently pro posed directional variants of the spatial model of voter choice to acc ount for candidate evaluations in US presidential elections contested between 1980 and 1992. I do this by estimating a statistical model tha t represents voter preference for a candidate as a weighted average of proximity and directional components. The analysis corroborates previ ous studies supporting the directional model, but illustrate that thes e results are sensitive to statistical specification. Alternative meth odological specifications favor a mixed directional-proximity model an d the traditional distance representation.