IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecm/wc2000/1586.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The New Theory of Strategic Voting

Author

Listed:
  • David P. Myatt

    (St. Catherine's College)

Abstract

This is an analysis of strategic voting under qualified majority voting. Existing formal analyses of the plurality rule predict complete coordination of strategic voting: a strict interpretation of Duverger's Law. This conclusion is rejected. Unlike previous models, the popular support for each option is not commonly certain. Agents base their vote on both public and private signals of popular support. When private signals are the main source of information, the uniquely stable equilibrium entails only limited strategic voting and hence partial coordination. This is due to the surprising presence of negative feedback --- strategic voting is a self-attenuating phenomenon. The theory leads to the conclusion that multi-candidate support in a plurality electoral system is perfectly consistent with rational voting behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • David P. Myatt, 2000. "The New Theory of Strategic Voting," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1586, Econometric Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecm:wc2000:1586
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/es2000/1586.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Myerson, Roger B. & Weber, Robert J., 1993. "A Theory of Voting Equilibria," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 102-114, March.
    2. Morris, Stephen & Shin, Hyun Song, 2004. "Coordination risk and the price of debt," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 133-153, February.
    3. Cox, Gary W., 1994. "Strategic Voting Equilibria under the Single Nontransferable Vote," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(3), pages 608-621, September.
    4. David P. Myatt, 1999. "A New Theory of Strategic Voting," Economics Series Working Papers 1999-W21, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David P. Myatt, 2000. "Strategic Voting Under the Qualified Majority Rule," Economics Series Working Papers 2000-W07, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Massimo Morelli, 2004. "Party Formation and Policy Outcomes under Different Electoral Systems," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(3), pages 829-853.
    3. Todd R. Kaplan & Bradley J. Ruffle, 2012. "Which Way to Cooperate," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(563), pages 1042-1068, September.
    4. Dhillon, Amrita & Lockwood, Ben, 2004. "When are plurality rule voting games dominance-solvable?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 55-75, January.
    5. Tandon, Sharad, 2012. "Election Outcomes and Food Security: Evidence from Consumption of Scheduled Castes and Tribes in India," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124414, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Laurent Bouton, 2013. "A Theory of Strategic Voting in Runoff Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1248-1288, June.
    7. Osborne, Martin J. & Rubinstein, Ariel, 2003. "Sampling equilibrium, with an application to strategic voting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 434-441, November.
    8. David P. Myatt & Stephen D. Fisher, 2002. "Everything is Uncertain and Uncertainty is Everything: Strategic Voting in Simple Plurality Elections," Economics Series Working Papers 115, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    9. Jacob Goeree & Jens Großer, 2007. "Welfare Reducing Polls," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 31(1), pages 51-68, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David P. Myatt, 2000. "Strategic Voting Under the Qualified Majority Rule," Economics Series Working Papers 2000-W07, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Micael Castanheira, 2003. "Why Vote For Losers?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1207-1238, September.
    3. Andonie, Costel & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2012. "Pre-election polls as strategic coordination devices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 681-700.
    4. Costel Andonie & Daniel Diermeier, 2022. "Electoral Institutions with impressionable voters," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(3), pages 683-733, October.
    5. Kei Kawai & Yasutora Watanabe, 2013. "Inferring Strategic Voting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 624-662, April.
    6. Emily Clough, 2008. "Still Converging? a Downsian Party System Without Polls," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 20(4), pages 461-476, October.
    7. Francesco Sinopoli & Giovanna Iannantuoni, 2007. "A spatial voting model where proportional rule leads to two-party equilibria," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 35(2), pages 267-286, January.
    8. Carlo Altomonte & Gloria Gennaro & Francesco Passarelli, 2019. "Collective Emotions and Protest Vote," CESifo Working Paper Series 7463, CESifo.
    9. David P. Myatt & Stephen D. Fisher, 2002. "Everything is Uncertain and Uncertainty is Everything: Strategic Voting in Simple Plurality Elections," Economics Series Working Papers 115, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    10. Christopher Li & Ricardo Pique, 2020. "A theory of strategic voting with non-instrumental motives," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 55(2), pages 369-398, August.
    11. Spenkuch, Jörg, 2013. "On the Extent of Strategic Voting," MPRA Paper 50198, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Dhillon, Amrita & Lockwood, Ben, 2004. "When are plurality rule voting games dominance-solvable?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 55-75, January.
    13. Arnaud Dellis, 2013. "The two-party system under alternative voting procedures," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(1), pages 263-284, January.
    14. Anna Bassi, 2015. "Voting systems and strategic manipulation: An experimental study," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(1), pages 58-85, January.
    15. Costel Andonie & Daniel Diermeier, 2017. "Path-dependency and coordination in multi-candidate elections with behavioral voters," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(4), pages 520-545, October.
    16. Myerson, Roger B., 1999. "Theoretical comparisons of electoral systems," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 671-697, April.
    17. Michael Herrmann, 2012. "Voter uncertainty and failure of Duverger’s law: an empirical analysis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 63-90, April.
    18. Emerson M. S. Niou, 2001. "Strategic Voting under Plurality and Runoff Rules," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 13(2), pages 209-227, April.
    19. Roger B. Myerson, 1996. "Economic Analysis of Political Institutions: An Introduction," Discussion Papers 1155, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    20. Yoichi Hizen, 2015. "Does a Least-Preferred Candidate Win a Seat? A Comparison of Three Electoral Systems," Economies, MDPI, vol. 3(1), pages 1-35, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecm:wc2000:1586. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.