Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is notorious for his illustrious political career, culminating in his election as the first President in post-Apartheid South Africa; his career can essentially be broken down into two stages, each of which is especially relevant to Downs' median voter theorem. During the first stage of his career, he spent 26 years in prison as a result of fighting the ensuing changes after "in 1948, the Afrikaner Nationalist party won the whites-only general election, and began to institute its policy of apartheid across South Africa." During this stage of his political career, his primary focus was on attaining suffrage for the non-white populace. The realization of his dream of an election open to voters of all races in 1994 effectively represented the appearance of a huge new mode on the voter preferences density function. The result was that the point at which the median voter lay on the policy spectrum was vastly different. Due to the immense size of the influx of new voters, the median voter was likely located extremely close to the new mode on the voter preferences density function. The second stage of his career was as an actual politician and party leader as he attempted to steer the proposed policies of his party toward the preferences of the new median voter. Ultimately, Mandela proved adept at identifying the preferences of the median voter as well as at advocating policies closest to those favored by the median voter, and consequently he won the Presidency.