Does the winner take it all? Federal policies and political extremism

Abstract

Whether citizens like or dislike federal policies often depends on regional differences. Because of geography, (economic) history or other path-dependent factors, certain regions are perceived to get more out of the union than others. We show that citizens, therefore, have a strategic incentive to elect Federal delegates that are more extreme than the representative voter. The intensity of such strategic delegation is U-shaped in expected benefits. The predictions of our model hence rationalise the voting differences we observe in the data between national and EU elections.