May increased partisanship lead to convergence of parties' policy platforms?

Parties face a trade-off between motivating partisans to participate in the electron and appealing to issue-oriented middle-of-the-road voters We show that, consequently, parties may diverge from the median voters' preferred policy by sending ambiguous messages to voters which include announcements of alternative platforms Moreover, surprisingly, an increase in the size of a partisan constituency may lead to platform convergence towards the median voters' preferred policy We identify two conditions for this outcome First, the electorate is sufficiently divided such that full convergence does not occur and, second, the majority of the non-partisan voters is more inclined to the party with increased support of partisans