Three-candidate spatial competition when candidates have valence: stochastic voting

We study the effects of stochastic (probabilistic) voting on equilibrium locations, equilibrium vote shares and comparative statics in a setup with three heterogeneous candidates and a single-dimensional issue space. Comparing the equilibria with and without stochastic voting, we find that under an appropriate level of uncertainty about voter behavior, the model has a pure strategy Nash Equilibrium (PSNE) that is free from several non-plausible features of the PSNE under deterministic voting. This result is robust to extensions to asymmetric density and plurality maximization.     

Multiparty electoral competition in the Netherlands and Germany: A model based on multinomial probit

A typical assumption of electoral models of party competition is that parties adopt policy positions so as to maximize expected vote share. Here we use Euro-barometer survey data and European elite-study data from 1979 for the Netherlands and Germany to construct a stochastic model of voter response, based on multinomial probit estimation. For each of these countries, we estimate a pure spatial electoral voting model and a joint spatial model. The latter model also includes individual voter and demographic characteristics. The pure spatial models for the two countries quite accurately described the electoral response as a stochastic function of party positions. We use these models to perform a thought experiment so as to estimate the expected vote maximizing party positions. We go on to propose a model of internal party decision-making based both on pre-election electoral estimation and post-election coalition bargaining. This model suggests why the various parties in the period in question did not adopt vote maximizing positions. We argue that maximizing expected vote will not, in general, be a rational party strategy in multiparty political systems which are based on proportional representation.     

A comparison of cumulative voting and generalized plurality voting

In market based societies consumers are able to express the intensity of their preference for an object by paying more for it. However, under some voting systems, consumers are unable to express the intensity of their preference for a candidate due to the constraint of the “one person, one vote” principle. Cumulative voting maintains the equality of the “one person, one vote” principle by allotting each voter the same number of votes, while also allowing for expression of intensity of candidate preference. This paper provides an experimental analysis of voter behavior under different voting systems.     

Risk aversion and bandwagon effect in the pivotal voter model

The empirical literature on the effects of opinion polls on election outcomes has recently found substantial evidence of a bandwagon effect, defined as the phenomenon according to which the publication of opinion polls is advantageous to the candidate with the greatest support. This result is driven, in the lab experiments, by a higher turnout rate among the majority than among the minority. Such evidence is however in stark contrast with the main theoretical model of electoral participation in public choice, the pivotal voter model, which predicts that the supporters of an underdog candidate participate at a higher rate, given the higher probability of casting a pivotal vote. This paper tries to reconcile this discrepancy by showing that a bandwagon effect can be generated within the pivotal voter model by concavity in the voters’ utility function, which makes electoral participation more costly for the expected loser supporters. Given the strict relationship between concavity and risk aversion, the paper also establishes the role of risk aversion as a determinant of bandwagon.     

Voter uncertainty and failure of Duverger’s law: an?empirical analysis

Real-world simple plurality elections rarely bear out the strong Duvergerian prediction that, in equilibrium, only two competitors receive votes. Recent advances in strategic voting theory demonstrate that voter uncertainty about competitors’ true support levels in the constituency may lead to limited strategic voting, and hence incomplete desertion of trailing parties. This is the first attempt to estimate empirically the impact of uncertainty on incentives to vote strategically. Calibrating a model of strategic voting to voting results from simple plurality elections in German constituencies, it is found that strategic voters operate under high levels of uncertainty. These results support the proposition that uncertainty about party support impedes formation of Duvergerian equilibria.     

Approval and plurality voting with uncertainty: Info-gap analysis of robustness

Voting algorithms are used to choose candidates by an electorate. However, voter participation is variable and uncertain, and projections from polls or past elections are uncertain because voter preferences may change. Furthermore, electoral victory margins are often slim. Variable voter participation or preferences, and slim margins of decision, have implications for choosing a voting algorithm. We focus on approval voting (AV) and compare it to plurality voting (PV), regarding their robustness to uncertainty in voting outcomes. We ask: by how much can voting outcomes change without altering the election outcomes? We see fairly consistent empirical differences between AV and PV. In single-winner elections, PV tends to be more robust to vote uncertainty than AV in races with large victory margins, while AV tends to be more robust at low victory margins. Two conflicting concepts—approval flattening and approval magnification—explain this tendency for reversal of robust dominance between PV and AV. We also examine the robustness to vote uncertainty of PV in elections for proportional representation of parties.

     

To vote or not to vote: The paradox of nonvoting

One paradox of voting states that, in a general election, in which many citizens vote, the probability that a single voter can affect the outcome is so small that in general citizens have no rational reason for voting. However, if all citizens accept this reasoning, then none will vote, and so each vote has a large probability of affecting the outcome. Hence all should vote after all. The adoption of mixed strategies resolves this paradox: if each citizen adopts a certain (small) probability of voting, then the actual number of citizens voting will be just enough to make it worth those citizens' while to vote. A Nash equilibrium point thus occurs. Here we compute Nash equilibria for the simple case of majority voting; for the more complicated case of composite voting (for example, as in a presidential election), we draw certain qualitative inferences.     

Campaign allocations under probabilistic voting

We develop a probabilistic voting model where candidates compete by advertising in different media markets. Ads are viewed by everyone within a market and cannot be targeted to subgroups such as one candidate??s partisans. Candidates estimate the distribution of voter preference intensities in a market, and campaign ads then shift this distribution. Individuals with any intensity vote with some probability for each candidate. We derive comparative static implications of changes in a variety of factors on the advertising decisions of each candidate. Using campaign advertising data from 2002, we find these results to be consistent with actual campaign allocation behavior.     

A comparison of prospective and retrospective voting with heterogeneous politicians

A long-standing empirical literature has been concerned with determining whether voters vote “prospectively or “retrospectively.” Despite this interest, little is known about the consequences of one voting regime versus another. This study addresses this deficiency. We find that voter welfare can be greatly affected by the candidate selection technique employed by voters. Among other findings, we show that “electing the best candidate” does not always maximize voter welfare. Furthermore, “myopic” voting is sometimes superior to “farsighted” voting. These findings have implications for interpretations of empirical studies of voter behavior.     

Social identity and voting behavior

This paper uses the unique social structure of Arab communities to examine the effect of social identity on voter turnout. We first show that voters are more likely to vote for a candidate who shares their social group (signified by last name) as compared to other candidates. Using last name as a measure of group affiliation, an inverted U-shaped relationship between group size and voter turnout has been found (borderline significant) which is consistent with theoretical models that reconcile the paradox of voting by incorporating group behavior.     

A general probabilistic spatial theory of elections

In this paper, we construct a general probabilistic spatial theory of elections and examine sufficient conditions for equilibrium in two-candidate contests with expected vote-maximizing candidates. Given strict concavity of the candidate objective function, a unique equilibrium exists and the candidates adopt the same set of policy positions. Prospective uncertainty, reduced policy salience, degree of concavity of voter utility functions, some degree of centrality in the feasible set of policy locations, and restrictions on the dimensionality of the policy space are all stabilizing factors in two-candidate elections. 3. CITIZEN. We have been called so of many, not that our heads are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely colored. And truly I think if all our wits were to issue out of one skill, they would fly east, west, north, south, and their consent of one direct way should be at once to all points o' the compass. (Shakespeare, coriolanus II.iii. 19–26)     

Approval voting,Condorcet's principle,and runoff elections

Approval voting allows each voter to vote for as many candidates as he wishes in an election but not cast more than one vote for each candidate of whom he approves. If there is a strict Condorcet candidate — a candidate who defeats all others in pairwise contests — approval voting is shown to be the only nonranked voting system that is always able to elect the strict Condorcet candidate when voters use sincere admissible strategies. Moreover, if a strict Condorcet candidate must be elected under ordinary plurality voting when voters use admissible strategies, then he must also be elected under approval voting when voters use admissible strategies, but the converse does not hold. The widely used plurality runoff method can also elect a strict Condorcet candidate when voters use admissible strategies on the first ballot, but some of these may have to be insincere to get the strict Condorcet candidate onto the runoff ballot. Furthermore, there is no case in which the strict Condorcet candidate is invariably elected under the plurality runoff method when voters use admissible first-ballot strategies. Thus, approval voting is superior to the plurality runoff method with respect to the Condorcet principle in its ability to elect the strict Condorcet candidate by sincere voting and in its ability to guarantee the election of the strict Condorcet candidate when voters use admissible strategies. In addition, approval voting is more efficient since it requires only one election and is probably less subject to strategic manipulation.     

Voting by proxy

I introduce voting by proxy for constructing and operating legislatures, and then compare it to direct representation, plurality, and single transferable vote (STV), which voting by proxy most closely resembles. When each voter uses voting by proxy to select his proxy among given legislators and elections are costless, voting by proxy maximizes the legislature's representation of the voting population. When each voter uses preferential voting by proxy, selecting a proxy during the vote count as well as a proxy in the legislature, and some ancillary rules are followed, I find that voting by proxy dominates STV and offers favorable tradeoffs against plurality. It improves representation and constituent service; eliminates gerrymandering; improves voter turnout; ranks the legislature's representatives by the proxies they hold rather than seniority; creates tighter representative-constituent links that lead to better informed voters, reducing the influence of special interests; and eliminates primary and runoff elections. Extra costs associated with its relative complexity or better representation can be made small.     

Is compulsory voting more democratic?

Lijphart (1997) endorses compulsory voting as a means to increase voter turnout. Considering the likely effects of the role of information (including its costs) on the decision to vote and taking an expressive view of voting, however, compels us to investigate two unexamined claims by such advocates: (i) that individuals are transformed by forcing them to vote, and (ii) that a compulsory electoral outcome is a more accurate reflection of community preferences.We argue that compelling those who are not particularly interested in, or informed about, the political process to vote increases the proportion of random votes and we show that under simple majority rule, compulsory voting may violate the Pareto principle; the less popular candidate is more likely to be elected. Our results cast doubt on the ”miracle of aggregation“ argument, which optimistically concludes that as long as uninformed votes are not systematically biased, they will have no effect on voting outcomes. We also briefly consider how information cascades can exacerbate this problem.     

The rational voter paradox revisited

The rational voter paradox rests on two fundamental assumptions. First, that voters are risk neutral. Second, that voters make decisive vote computations. The implications of maximizing the expected utility of wealth rather than the utility of expected wealth are explored. The validity of decisive vote computations are examined through concepts of weak and strict in the limit free rider assumptions. The paper proposes a margin of victory model of voting behavior based on information levels and the political division of labor.     

Accounting for Voter Heterogeneity within and across Districts with a Factor-Analytic Voter-Choice Model

José Afonso Mazzon Faculdade de Administração e Economia, University of São Paulo, Ave. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 908, CEP 0558-900 São Paulo, Brazil. e-mail: jamazzon{at}usp.br e-mail: kamakura{at}duke.edu (corresponding author) In this study, we propose a model of individual voter behaviorthat can be applied to aggregate data at the district (or precinct)levels while accounting for differences in political preferencesacross districts and across voters within each district. Ourmodel produces a mapping of the competing candidates and electoraldistricts on a latent "issues" space that describes how politicalpreferences in each district deviate from the average voterand how each candidate caters to average voter preferences withineach district. We formulate our model as a random-coefficientsnested logit model in which the voter first evaluates the candidatesto decide whether or not to cast his or her vote, and then choosesthe candidate who provides him or her with the highest value.Because we allow the random coefficient to vary not only acrossdistricts but also across unobservable voters within each district,the model avoids the Independence of Irrelevant AlternativesAssumption both across districts and within each district, therebyaccounting for the cannibalization of votes among similar candidateswithin and across voting districts. We illustrate our proposedmodel by calibrating it to the actual voting data from the firststage of a two-stage state governor election in the Brazilianstate of Santa Catarina, and then using the estimates to predictthe final outcome of the second stage.     

Expressive Voting and Government Redistribution: Testing Tullock's `Charity of the Uncharitable'

Models of expressive voting postulate that voters will`consume' ideological stances on issues by voting for them,even when they are against the voter's own narrow selfinterest, if the probability of being a decisive voter is low.When a voter is unlikely to sway the outcome, the odds that avoter will incur any real personal cost (a higher tax burden,for example) from her own expressive vote is small. We testand find support for Tullock's straightforward empiricalimplication of this model, that government welfare (transfer)payments are inversely related to the probability of being thedecisive voter.     

Political knowledge,the decision calculus,and proximity voting

This paper employs an online voting simulation to examine how the vote decision process affects the vote choice. We focus on proximity voting, an empirically powerful but informationally demanding model of voter behavior. Holding contextual factors constant, we find that more politically knowledgeable individuals engage in a deeper and broader decision process prior to casting their ballot, and, in turn, a more detailed decision process boosts the likelihood that one will vote proximately. In addition, we find that detailed decision processes have a stronger link with proximity voting among the most knowledgeable individuals, who are able to skillfully engage with new information.