A comment on sequential elections and overlapping terms: voting for US Senate

In a recent paper in this journal, Heckelman explains why senators from the same State often vote differently, and still get re-elected. He argues tha t in a two-party system, primary elections lead to divergence of party plat forms. Moreover, he shows that the introduction of primary elections and ov erlapping terms into the median voter model leads to the prediction that ex tremist candidates win the general election. In this comment, I argue that when in primaries voters view office as a means to policy, primary election s strengthens rather than weakens the prediction of the median voter model that policy platforms converge. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights r eserved.