Beyond the Median: Voter Preferences, District Heterogeneity, and Political Representation
利用个体层面投票数据直接测量选民偏好，发现立法者最受同质选区中位数选民偏好的约束，挑战了中位数选民模型的核心预测。
Despite the centrality of the median voter prediction in political economy models, overwhelming empirical evidence shows that legislators regularly take positions that diverge significantly from the preferences of the median voter in their districts. However, all these empirical studies to date lack the necessary data to directly measure the preferences of the median voter. We utilize a unique data set consisting of individual‐level voting data that allows us to construct direct measures of voter preferences. We find that legislators are most constrained by the preferences of the median voter in homogeneous districts.