Spatial voting utilities

Utility of each voter (rows) for each alternative (columns): quadratic, linear (Euclidean), city-block, Gaussian (NOMINATE), directional dot product, Rabinowitz-Macdonald with a penalty beyond the region of acceptability, angular (Matthews), a convex proximity-directional mixture, Grofman discounting toward the status quo, and categorical proximity/directional; valence is added per alternative.

Usage

VoterUtility(
  voters,
  alternatives,
  model = c("quadratic", "linear", "cityblock", "gaussian", "dot", "angular", "rm",
    "mixed", "discount", "categorical_proximity", "categorical_directional"),
  weights = NULL,
  neutral = NULL,
  beta = 1,
  mix = 0.5,
  status_quo = NULL,
  discount = 0.5,
  region = NULL,
  valence = NULL
)

Arguments

voters, alternatives

Points (matrix rows, list of vectors, or a vector for one dimension).

model

Utility model.

weights

Salience per dimension.

neutral

Neutral point for the directional models.

beta, mix, status_quo, discount, region

Model parameters.

valence

Optional valence per alternative.

Value

list(utility, choice (1-based), total).

References

Enelow, J. M. and Hinich, M. J. (1984). The Spatial Theory of Voting. Cambridge University Press. Rabinowitz, G. and Macdonald, S. E. (1989). A directional theory of issue voting. American Political Science Review 83, 93-121. Grofman, B. (1985). The neglected role of the status quo in models of issue voting. Journal of Politics 47, 230-237.

Examples

VoterUtility(0, c(1, -2))$utility
#>      [,1] [,2]
#> [1,]   -1   -4