Two major political problems that face every community are: (1) to determine how much money the local government should spend and, given that quantity as a budgetary constraint; (2) what percentage of the budget should be allocated to each category of publicly provided goods and services. A new type of survey instrument, the bidding game, can be used to address the second problem. Commnunity attitudes are revealed by allowing each respondent to spend play money to construct his, or her, preferred budget. The outcomes of these games are utilized to construct a median budget. A mathematical model of political equilibrium suggests that a median budget will win a two way election with any other budget. Preliminary, quasi-experimental results support· this hypothesis.