The Effect of Social Conformity on Collective Voting Behavior

This article investigates the effect of social conformity onvoting behavior. Past research shows that many people vote toconform with the social norm that voting is a civic duty. Thehypothesis here is that when conformity motivates people tovote, it also stimulates conformist behavior among some voterswhen they decide which party to vote for. This produces a distinctiverelationship between voter turnout and the distribution of votesamong parties—a relationship not anticipated by rationalchoice theory. I test a mathematical model of this behaviorwith linear and nonlinear regression analyses of state-leveldata for presidential elections in the United States from 1904to 1996, longitudinal data on parliamentary elections in WesternEurope over most of the twentieth century, and cross-sectionaldata for recent elections in Western Europe, Eastern Europe,and Russia. The results generally validate the model.