Why Bother? Supporters of Locally Weaker Parties Are Less Likely to Vote or to Vote Sincerely

Voters are deterred from casting a vote and more likely to vote strategically if their preferred choice is less competitive in their electoral district. We use 2019 Canadian Election Study data to show that respondents’ answers to a “how likely are you to vote” question depend on their estimate of their preferred party's local chances of winning, relative to other parties. This deterrent effect on turnout from the competitiveness of a voter's preferred party is concentrated among certain parties (NDP, Green, People's Party of Canada). Under first-past-the-post (FPTP), voters with particular policy perspectives are systematically deterred from voting, relative to other voters. Furthermore, we find that despite supporters of all parties having an incentive to vote strategically if their party is outside the top two in the district, strategic voting is heavily concentrated among voters who prefer parties other than the nationally most competitive two parties.

Poisson voting games under proportional rule

We analyze strategic voting under proportional rule and two parties, embedding the basic spatial model into the Poisson framework of population uncertainty. We prove that there exists a unique Nash equilibrium. We show that it is characterized by a cutpoint in the policy space that is always located between the average of the two parties’ positions and the median of the distribution of voters’ types. We also show that, as the expected number of voters goes to infinity, the equilibrium converges to that of the case with deterministic population size.

What are we voting for? Opposition alliance joint campaigns in electoral autocracies

Existing analyses of opposition pre-electoral alliance formation in electoral autocracies neglect their coordinated election campaigns against incumbent autocrats. This paper argues that opposition alliance joint campaigns can increase the salience of the anti-regime cleavage, signal mutual compromise, and highlight the positive material and policy gains voters will reap following regime defeat. Together, they persuade ideologically and ethnically disparate opposition supporters to engage in the cross-party strategic voting necessary to maximize opposition vote share and their chances of winning. Empirical findings from Malaysia’s historic 2018 general elections support the theory’s propositions. A pre-electoral survey experiment estimates that an opposition alliance’s joint campaigns increases cross-party strategic voting by about 10 percentage points among opposition voters. Field interviews and ethnographic observation during the election campaigning revealed the diverse methods and mechanisms of joint campaigns. Malaysia’s Pakatan Harapan opposition alliance eventually prevailed through a combination of joint campaigning against a flailing incumbent.

On coalitional manipulation for multiwinner elections: shortlisting

Shortlisting of candidates—selecting a group of “best” candidates—is a special case of multiwinner elections. We provide the first in-depth study of the computational complexity of strategic voting for shortlisting based on the perhaps most basic voting rule in this scenario, $$\ell $$ ℓ -Bloc (every voter approves $$\ell $$ ℓ candidates). In particular, we investigate the influence of several different group evaluation functions (e.g., egalitarian versus utilitarian) and tie-breaking mechanisms modeling pessimistic and optimistic manipulators. Among other things, we conclude that in an egalitarian setting strategic voting may indeed be computationally intractable regardless of the tie-breaking rule. Altogether, we provide a fairly comprehensive picture of the computational complexity landscape of this scenario.

Strategic voting revisited: the case of the 2018 Taipei City mayoral election

In this study, we examine whether strategic voting – in which a voter seeks to maximize the expected payoff from casting a ballot – occurred among late voters in the 2018 Taipei City mayoral election. This multi-candidate mayoral contest was noteworthy because ballot-counting started before all the votes had been cast, with preliminary results being leaked to the media. Theoretically, having access to real-time updates of voting figures could have influenced the decision of voters who were still in line waiting to cast their ballots. Analysis and reconstruction of aggregate polling data, however, demonstrate that there was very little (if any) strategic voting among these late voters on election day, even if they had information that might have induced them to vote strategically.

When Knowledge Is Not Enough: Individual Preconditions for Strategic Voting

Voters often have to decide between supporting their preferred candidate or choosing a less appealing but more viable alternative. What are the underlying mechanisms that enable citizens to navigate these strategic trade-offs? Combining experimental and observational evidence from the UK, we differentiate three crucial preconditions for strategic voting---motivation, information, and capabilities---and provide converging evidence illuminating how these factors interact. Specifically, we find that high levels of motivation are a necessary condition for the beneficial effects of information and capabilities to manifest. Our findings suggest that a narrow focus on political knowledge to improve strategic voting and thereby democratic representation is short-sighted. Methodologically, we offer a novel experimental framework that enables researchers to independently manipulate different mechanisms underlying citizen competence.

Voting in multi-stage elimination contests: Evidence from a Karaoke show

We employ the data from a karaoke contest to analyze strategic voting. Participants face a trade-off when voting for the contestant they want to eliminate. Excluding worst-performers increases the size of the prize allocated to the winner, whereas excluding top-performers increases the chances to become the winner. We analyze the performance and voting decisions and justifications of 138 participants in this contest across 23 episodes. We find that votes for worst-performers are much more common than votes for top-performers, and the justifications for voting due to the competitors' mistakes are the most prominent. Although contestants are not informed of the performance of themselves or any other participant, the likelihood to vote for the worst-performer is higher than the probability of randomly voting for someone else.

Insincerely Yours

Every known voting method can be manipulated, hence the tactic of “strategic voting.” But some voting methods are harder to manipulate than others and therefore encourage “truthful revelation” of voters’ preferences. These interact with the problems that various voting systems have (following from Chapter 4) when voters are asked to choose between more than two options. Many organizations try to deal with the “problem” of many choices by breaking every decision down into a set of “yes/no” votes. The most famous of these “parliamentary process” procedures is Robert’s Rules of Order, widely used throughout the world. Controlling the sequence of “yes/no” votes can often manipulate the outcome, which is known in political science as “agenda control.” Other ways to manipulate outcomes includes how the choices are described (“framing” effects) and the biases (either explicit or implicit) of “decision facilitators.” This chapter discusses these issues and suggests ways to avoid their being used adversely in group decision-making.