Spatial Effects on Voting Power in Representative Democracies

Abstract

In representative democracies, social choice requires the election of representatives to a legislature, and then the enactment of legislation by its members. In this paper, numerical simulation is used to investigate the extent to which the relative voting power of representatives in a legislature is affected by locational considerations. Results of the simulation indicate that voting power tends to decrease when supporters of one of two competing political parties are more concentrated spatially. The results are consistent with empirical evidence concerning electoral bias accruing against parties whose supporters are concentrated.