Spatial model of voting

The spatial model of voting puts voters and candidates in a multi-dimensional space, where each dimension represents a single political issue, sub-component of an issue, or candidate attribute, even including non-political properties of the candidates, such as perceived corruption, health, etc. Voters are then modeled as having an ideal point in this space, with a preference distance between themselves and each candidate (usually Euclidean distance), i.e. a voter may be closer to a candidate on gun control, but disagree on abortion. Voters are then modeled as voting for the candidates whose attributes or policy proposals are nearest to their ideal point (or strategically voting to try to minimize their distance to the actual winner). Other models that follow the idea of “closeness” are called proximity models.

The common one-dimensional political spectrum, or various two-dimensional political compasses, can then be considered projections of this multi-dimensional space onto a smaller number of dimensions. For example, a study of German voters found that at least four dimensions were required to adequately represent all political parties.

The Spatial Model attempts to show the perceptions and decisions of voters when issue voting strategies are used in elections. This model assumes that if someone’s issue preferences are placed on a hypothetical spatial field along with all possible candidates’ policy positions, the individual will vote for the candidate whose political stances are closest to their own.