Capitalize and Capitulate: Electoral Competition Under Uncertain Valence

Abstract

This paper studies political mavericks---newcomers to politics, yet whose decisive policies and powerful charisma both animate their base and make party leaders cautious. This paper utilizes a formal model of a two-party spatial competition to study these mavericks: examining both the response of the establishment and the maverick's impact on the ideological landscape. The key distinguishing factor of the maverick, and of the model framework, is the treatment of the maverick's valence, their pull with voters, as stochastic. From this treatment, three key results emerge: the maverick capitalizes on their expected valence by locating closer to their ideal policy, the opposition party is torn between moderating and radicalizing, and the establishment acts as a filter for more volatile maverick candidates. An empirical study of U.S. House open-seat races finds that open-seat successors are significantly more extreme than their predecessors, with the effect concentrated around newcomers---consistent with the formal model's predictions. The framework then offers insights into political environments in which the primary uncertainty moves from voter distribution to the performance of the candidates.