Partisan Banners: Adaptive Parties in Multi-District Competition

Abstract Electoral competition in the United States takes place across various neighboring and overlapping constituencies. However, many models of elections are of single districts (exceptions including Austen-Smith 1986, Snyder and Ting 2002 and Callander 2005) and single ideological dimensions. These restrictions ignore the interplay of national and local politics as well as the role of heterogeneity in coalition formation. Multi-district competition suggests agent-based modeling with multiple issue dimensions. Starting from the adaptive parties model Kollman, Miller and Page (1992). I model multi-district competition with a distinction between candidates and parties. Parties are defined as a collection of autonomous agents who contest elections across a number of districts. Co-partisans share a brand-name but do not act in concert. I explore the tension between the party coalition and the candidate-centered election