Lorenzo De Sio
Jean Monnet Fellow
Research project: Are less-involved Voters the Key to Winning Elections?
lorenzo.desio@eui.eu
Tel. [+39] 055 4685 765
Fax [+39] 055 4685 730
Office: Villa Malafrasca VM002
Biographical Note
Lorenzo De Sio received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Florence. He is involved in the ITANES (Italian National Election Studies) research group, the CISE (Italian Centre for Electoral Studies) and in the “The True European Voter” research project (ESF-COST Action IS0806).
His research interests are elections, voting behaviour and party competition in comparative perspective, as well as in innovation in quantitative methodology.
Among his publications are articles appearing in Comparative Political Studies, South European Society and Politics, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, Polis.
Are Less-involved Voters the Key to Winning Elections?
Taking as a starting point the classical spatial model of voting and party competition proposed by Downs (1957), some major weaknesses of the model are identified, and an innovative model of party competition is proposed.
This new model envisages competition on both positional and valence issues, and assigns a key role to the heterogeneity of voters in terms of political sophistication.
The model is then tested on survey data regarding 20 elections in Italy, France and the U.S., spanning a thirty-year time period.