This book provides an introduction to an important approach to the study of voting and elections: the spatial theory of voting.

Preface; 1. Spatial voting models: the behavioural assumptions; 2. The unidimensional spatial voting model; 3. A two-dimensional spatial model; 4. A general spatial model of candidate competition; 5. The influence of candidate characteristics and abstention on election outcomes; 6. Voting on budgets; 7. Models of voter uncertainty; 8. Institutions; 9. Empirical testing of the spatial theory of elections; 10. Concluding observations; References; Answers to selected problems; Index.