The Economics of Split-Ticket Voting in Representative Democracies

In U.S. elections, voters often vote for candidates from different parties for president and Congress. Voters also express dissatisfaction with the performance of Congress as a whole and satisfaction with their own representative. We develop a model of split-ticket voting in which government spending is financed by uniform taxes. The benefits from this spending are concentrated. While the model generates split-ticket voting, overall spending is too high only if the president's powers are limited. Overall spending is too high in a parliamentary system. Our model can be used as the basis of an argument for term limits.