Skip Navigation


Political Analysis Advance Access originally published online on June 29, 2006
Political Analysis 2006 14(4):393-420; doi:10.1093/pan/mpl003
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
14/4/393    most recent
mpl003v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Grynaviski, J. D.
Right arrow Articles by Corrigan, B. E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Specification Issues in Proximity Models of Candidate Evaluation (with Issue Importance)

Jeffrey D. Grynaviski

Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, 5828 S. University Ave., Chicago, IL 60637

Bryce E. Corrigan

Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, 5700 Haven Hall, 505 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045 e-mail: becorrig{at}umich.edu

e-mail: grynaviski{at}uchicago.edu (corresponding author)

The use of the proximity model to represent the relationship between citizens' policy attitudes and the positions of candidates on the issues of the day has considerable appeal because it offers a bridge between theoretical models of political behavior and empirical work. However, there is little consensus among applied researchers about the appropriate representation of voter behavior with respect to the measurement of issue distance, candidate location, or whether to allow heterogeneity in the weight that each individual places on particular issues. Each of these choices suggests a different, and reasonably complicated, nonlinear relationship between voter utility and candidate and voter issue positions which may have a meaningful influence on the substantive conclusions drawn by the researcher. Yet, little attention has been given to the best way to represent the proximity model in applied work. The purpose of this paper is to identify which forms of the proximity model work best, with particular consideration given to the identification of functional forms that are invariant to the choice of scale for the independent variables.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 POLIT ANALHome page
S. E. Macdonald, G. Rabinowitz, and O. Listhaug
Simulating Models of Issue Voting
Political Analysis, October 1, 2007; 15(4): 406 - 427.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.