Elected representatives do not faithfully deliver policies desired by majorities of their constituents. While many blame special interests or failures by voters for frustrated majorities, I suggest these explanations incomplete. Voters can cause candidates for office to frustrate majorities because of differences in issue intensity. This chapter presents the controversy, the basic argument, connections to single-issue voters and issue publics, the main results, and the scope and outline of the book.

In order for intensity theory to help explain political systems, voters must vary in how intensely they care about issues. The goal of this chapter is to provide evidence that issue preferences influence vote choice similarly to their assumed operation in intensity theory. I present some of the existing evidence on this matter, explain the debate, and then provide an exploration of issue intensity and vote choice in the 2016 American presidential election.

In this chapter I explore three extensions to the mathematical model presented in Chapter 4. First, I show that the results do not depend upon the balance of minority to majority assumed in Chapter 4. Instead, at any ratio of majority to minority size, candidates might side with an intense minority over a less-intense majority. Candidates do not, however, side with any intense minority, siding only with those of a sufficient combination of size and intensity. Second, I consider the free-rider problem in large electorates. I discuss a modification to the mathematical model where increasing the size of the electorate does not prevent some voters from choosing to incur costly political action. Finally, I consider the social welfare implications of intensity theory showing that utilitarian welfare can sometimes be higher with frustrated majorities and costly political action than under simple majority rule.

In this chapter I present results from a mathematical formalization of intensity theory. I apply tools from game theory to analyze the dynamics of electoral competition when voters vary in how much they care about policy and when candidates do not know which voters care more and less intensely. I show that candidates for office choose policy platforms as a function of the size and intensity of opposing policy coalitions. Candidates sometimes set policy with an intense minority even though they know that a less-intense majority wants the opposite policy. But they also sometimes choose not to frustrate majorities even with an intense minority.

Intensity theory provides numerous empirical implications. This chapter introduce the empirical analysis of the book and explains why the four empirical chapters presented offer fruitful evaluation of the theory.

This chapter provides an introduction to the meaning of issue intensity and frustrated majorities through review of the existing theory and evidence of political science. I suggest that while theories of trade politics, bureacracy, legislative behavior, and political parties have explicitly or implicitly considered the consequences of varying issue intensity, the political science of elections has given it short attention. I show how the political science of the electoral connection complicates many existing explanations for frustrated majorities and suggest that adding issue intensity to the electoral connection provides an improved explanation.

In this concluding chapter I summarize the theoretical and empirical results, provide a recipe to apply intensity theory in new settings, revisit and speculate about model assumptions, suggest five key implications for our understanding of representation, electoral competition, and political action, discuss the potential importance of issue intensity for the dynamics of policy change, and offer concluding thoughts.

In this chapter I walk through the how and why of a theory of issue intensity and electoral competition and build the basics of the mathematical model used to explore intensity theory. I lay out six foundational assumptions of the model drawn from existing theories of elections in political science or political economy. The assumptions rule out current explanations for frustrated majorities so that I can show that the combination of issue intensity and electoral competition alone can cause frustrated majorities. I show how costly political action becomes an important part of the story when candidates cannot perfectly observe the issue intensity of voters. I then present a simple mathematical model with numerical examples to provide intuition for analysis in subsequent chapters.

This chapter explores two case histories where American politicians appear to have sided with intense minorities over less-intense majorities. First, I present the case of federal funding for stem cell research in the early 2000s. I find evidence that majorities supported allocating federal health research funds toward research using embryonic stem cells yet federal policy remained stringent for most of the decade. Second, I present the case of firearm regulation following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Although large majorities indicated support for new regulation of firearms, no new regulations passed Congress. An intense minority appears to have used costly political action to communicate their strong opposition to new regulations.