We consider two-stage electoral competitions with strategic voters, investigating the effects of valence (i.e., a candidate’s personal quality) on policy polarization. In our model, two parties compete in a general election, and each party has two office-seeking candidates. Parties first hold a primary election to decide their representative, and then put forward their winning candidate to compete in the general election. Candidates are thus characterized by their promised policy and their valence. Although voters value policies differently, they value valence uniformly. We focus on a competitive regime pure strategy Nash equilibrium where the candidate with the highest valence does not necessarily win the general election. We provide the sufficient conditions under which such an equilibrium exists, as well as a novel comparative static analysis of the valence differences between candidates (or the valence advantage). Our findings demonstrate that changing the valence advantage in general and primary elections can pose differing implications for policy outcomes and policy polarization.

我们考虑与战略选民进行两阶段的选举竞争，研究效价（即候选人的个人素质）对政策极化的影响。在我们的模型中，两个政党参加大选，每个政党都有两名寻求公职的候选人。各政党首先举行初选，确定代表，然后提出获胜候选人参加大选。因此，候选人的特点是他们所承诺的政策和他们的效价。尽管选民对政策的评价不同，但他们对效价的评价是一致的。我们关注竞争性政权纯策略纳什均衡，其中效价最高的候选人不一定会赢得大选。我们提供了存在这种平衡的充分条件，以及对候选者之间的价差（或价优势）的新颖的比较静态分析。我们的研究结果表明，改变大选和初选中的效价优势可能会对政策结果和政策极化产生不同的影响。