Adaptive voting: an empirical analysis of participation and choice (original) (raw)

Satisfaction and adaptation in voting behavior: an empirical exploration

2010

Dynamic models of learning and adaptation have provided realistic predictions in terms of voting behavior. This study aims at contributing to their scant empirical verification. We develop a learning algorithm based on bounded rationality estimating the pattern of learning process through a two-stage econometric model. The analysis links voting behavior to past choices and economic satisfaction derived from previous period election and state of the economy. This represents a novelty in the literature on voting that assumes given voter preferences. Results show that persistence is positively affected by the combination of income changes and past behavior and by union membership.

Perspectives on Whether or Not to Vote and on the Complexity of Democratic Elections

Atlantic Economic Journal, 2016

Within the context of current political and economic realities, several perspectives on voting experiences, voter behavior and turnout, and the complexity of the election process are provided in this special section of the Atlantic Economic Journal. The first study by Hansen, Shughart, and Yonk examines the controversial 2015 Greek referendum. In particular, on July 5, 2015, Greek citizens voted on whether their country should accept the terms of austerity offered by the European Union (EU) for a bailout from the country's financial crisis. With an overall turnout rate of 62.5%, 61.3% of those voting voted "no." While a majority of voters in every district opposed the bailout's terms, the margin against the proposed austerity measures ranged from 51.2% in Lakonia to 73.8% in Chania. This study explores whether political parties influenced voters' decisions to accept or reject the EU's budgetary reforms. The study examines whether party platforms are merely "cheap talk" or are salient in determining electoral outcomes. Formal hypothesis testing is undertaken at the voting district level. The key independent variable is party influence, which is measured by party vote shares in the nationwide election held in January 2015. The dependent variable is the percentage that voted "no" to austerity on July 5, 2015 in each of Greece's 56 electoral districts. The model controls for average age and the unemployment rate across regions, as well as the fraction of firsttime voters in each electoral district. Empirical estimation implies that a pro-austerity party (New Democracy) was a significant factor impacting the results of the referendum. This research finding bolsters the claim that political parties can shape electoral outcomes on questions decided via direct democracy. A substantial literature finds an interaction between economic and political institutions, suggesting that more market-oriented economic institutions tend to enhance the durability of

How Persistent is Voting Behaviour? Evidence from British Panel Data

2006

Abstract Individuals who vote in one election are also more likely to vote in the next. Modelling the causal relationship between consecutive voting decisions however is intrinsically difficult, as this positive association can exist due to unobserved heterogeneity (ie some fixed, but unobserved, characteristics makes voters consistently turn out to vote) or habit formation (ie past turnout decisions influence subsequent turnout decisions).

The Evolution of New Party Systems: Voter Learning and Electoral Systems

Political Studies Review, 2021

How do new party systems evolve over time? This article argues that party system evolution requires the solution of coordination problems that voters face in early elections; this happens through a learning mechanism. Elections reveal information to voters, who update their beliefs about party viability and the distribution of voters' preferences and adjust their behaviour. The institutional setting, however, strongly conditions the pace of learning. Restrictive electoral systems (single-member district) accelerate learning through the harsh penalties they impose on miscoordination, while permissive ones (proportional representation) prolong it. Testing the argument on a district-level dataset in new democracies provides ample support; voters learn to cast fewer wasted votes over time and this happens faster in single-member district systems. The findings point to a trade-off between consolidation and representation; while party system evolution is facilitated by restrictive electoral systems, the presence of distinct social groups in the political arena is better served by permissive ones.

Learning in Elections and Voter Turnout

Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2010

Voter turnout in game theoretic models of voting has typically been difficult to predict because of the problem of multiple Nash equilibria. Many of these equilibria require an extreme precision of beliefs among voters that is unlikely to be reached in real elections. At the same time, mechanisms like pre-election polls exist to shape the beliefs of voters about expected turnout. We combine these two features in a model of voter learning in elections and derive the asymptotically stable equilibria of both complete and incomplete information games in a simple symmetric setting with two candidates. We also show how the model can be used to qualitatively explain several phenomena observed in reality: increases in costs of voting affect turnout adversely but there may be persistence of turnout levels between elections even though costs and other parameters change. Increase in uncertainty increases turnout while increases in the size of the electorate decrease it, in line with intuition.

Learning (Not) to Vote: the Generational Basis of Turnout Decline in Established Democracies

Using survey data from all six countries where elections have been studied continuously since the 1960s, we examine the role of generational replacement in turnout change. Early electoral experiences leave an imprint on citizens who generally continue to vote or not vote just as they generally continue to support the same political party (or no party). Based on this insight we propose a partial explanation for declining turnout in countries which, in the 1960s and 70s, lowered the age at which citizens could vote. The lower voting age allowed unmotivated individuals to become socialized into non-voting behavior with unfortunate consequences for turnout in many countries. Continuing turnout decline since the early 1970s reflects at least in part the normal mechanism of generational replacement as voters leave the electorate whose early electoral experiences were more positive. The findings have far-reaching implications for our understanding of the mainsprings of electoral change.

Credible Sources and Sophisticated Voters: When Does New Information Induce Economic Voting?

The Journal of Politics

When does new economic information cause voters to re-evaluate the government's competence, and ultimately vote economically? Since politically-relevant information is often conveyed by actors with incentives to influence voter perceptions, the credibility of information sources can vary significantly. This article randomly varies whether voters receive an aggregate unemployment forecast from the central bank, government or main opposition party using a survey experiment in Denmark with access to detailed panel data. We find that politically sophisticated voters discern differences in institutional credibility and the political cost of the signal, and update their unemployment expectations accordingly. Despite failing to differentiate political costs, unsophisticated voters still substantially update their expectations. However, while sophisticated voters intend to engage in substantial prospective economic voting, unsophisticated voters do not link their new unemployment expectations to their vote intention. These findings suggest that economic information supports economic voting most when it is credible and reaches sophisticated voters.

How costly is voting? Explaining individual differences in the costs of voting

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 2019

A more profound analysis of the variables in the voting equation is needed to improve our knowledge on voting. In this paper, we endogenize the costs of voting (C) and test several models with the help of the Making Electoral Democracy Work database, which contains information on C and its potential determinants for national elections in France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and Canada. We test whether C is affected by socio-demographic and attitudinal factors related to: (a) informational costs, (b) the costs of the act of voting itself, and (c) those bound to lead to an ex-ante rationalization of C. By doing so, we contribute to bridging the rational choice and the sociological and psychosociological models of voting. We find strong evidence that the three types of factors have a statistical and substantive effect on C. In particular, C falls with party identification, education, union membership, years in the region where the elections are held, interest in politics and the importance attributed to elections, while it is higher for women and rural dwellers. Age shows a curvilinear relationship, initially reducing C and increasing it later. Contrary to expected, the presence of kids at home does not significantly increase C.

Economic Voting: An Introduction

Electoral Studies, 2000

The following volume defines the state of art in the field of economic voting, as of 1998. It is based upon a conference held in August 1998 at Sandbjerg Manor, Denmark. We are proud to have brought together the group that produced the 18 articles of this volume. 1 The group does not include everybody active in the field, but they are the lion's share of the leaders. Still, we are sure that there are new researchers in the field, whom we will soon learn about, hopefully as a result of this scholarly exchange. Our volume is a sequel to Norpoth et al. (1991), based upon a similar conference roughly 10 years before ours. Economic voting is a field that mixes economics and political science and does so by means of econometrics. Political scientists analyze elections, and economists routinely use macro welfare functions, with little empirical basis. Further, for the political scientist it is wonderful to have explanatory variables that are well known, carefully collected and quantitative. For the economist, voting forms an important limiting case where people decide while having only a small and "intangible" interest in the outcome. Hence, it is no surprise that the subject has attracted many researchers from both disciplines. Indeed, more than 200 relevant books and papers have been published. The main findings from this literature are summarized in Table 1. The last item on the list reveals the main reason why this research has shown no tendency to die. Many nice VP-functions have been found over the years, only to suddenly disappear. Several such relations exist in the social sciences (the Phillips