IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v53y1987i2p101-130.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Retrospective voting: An experimental study

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth Collier
  • Richard McKelvey
  • Peter Ordeshook
  • Kenneth Williams

Abstract

This essay reports on some experiments designed to study two candidate electoral competition when voters are ‘retrospective’ voters. The experiments consist of a sequence of elections in which subjects play the part of both voters and candidates. In each election the incumbent adopts a policy position in a one-dimensional policy space, and voters are paid (on the basis of single peaked utility function over that space) for the position adopted by the incumbent. Neither voters nor candidates are informed of the voter utility functions, and the only information received by the voter is the payoff he has received from the present and previous incumbent administrations. Despite the severely limited information of candidates and voters, we find that, generally, candidates converge toward the median voter ideal point. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1987

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth Collier & Richard McKelvey & Peter Ordeshook & Kenneth Williams, 1987. "Retrospective voting: An experimental study," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 101-130, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:53:y:1987:i:2:p:101-130
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00125844
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00125844
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00125844?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McKelvey, Richard D. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1985. "Elections with limited information: A fulfilled expectations model using contemporaneous poll and endorsement data as information sources," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 55-85, June.
    2. Popkin, Samuel & Gorman, John W. & Phillips, Charles & Smith, Jeffrey A., 1976. "Comment: What Have You Done for Me Lately? Toward An Investment Theory of Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 70(3), pages 779-805, September.
    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. Reuben, Ernesto & Traxler, Christian & van Winden, Frans, 2015. "Advocacy and political convergence under preference uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 16-36.
    2. Domenico Raguseo & Jiří Špalek & Martin Klus, 2012. "A simple in-class experiment on the efficient production of the pure public good touching the median voter theorem," Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, Mendel University Press, vol. 60(4), pages 319-326.
    3. Arnaud Dellis & Sean D’Evelyn & Katerina Sherstyuk, 2011. "Multiple votes, ballot truncation and the two-party system: an experiment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(2), pages 171-200, July.
    4. repec:pri:cepsud:111palfrey is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Kenneth Collier & Peter Ordeshook & Kenneth Williams, 1989. "The rationally uninformed electorate: Some experimental evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 3-29, January.
    6. Arthur J. H. C. Schram, 2008. "Experimental Public Choice," Springer Books, in: Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy, chapter 32, pages 579-591, Springer.
    7. Thomas R. Palfrey, 2005. "Laboratory Experiments in Political Economy," Working Papers 91, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    8. Plott, Charles R. & Llewellyn, Morgan, 2015. "Information transfer and aggregation in an uninformed committee: A model for the selection and use of biased expert advice," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 208-223.
    9. Sugato Dasgupta & Kenneth C. Williams, 1995. "Search Behavior Of Asymmetrically Informed Voters: An Experimental Study," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(1), pages 21-41, March.
    10. Sugato Dasgupta & Kenneth C. Williams, 2002. "A Principal-Agent Model of Elections with Novice Incumbents," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 14(4), pages 409-438, October.
    11. Kenneth C. Williams, 1994. "Sequential Elections and Retrospective Voting," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 6(2), pages 239-255, April.
    12. Thomas R. Palfrey, 2005. "Laboratory Experiments in Political Economy," Working Papers 91, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    13. Kai A. Konrad & Raisa Sherif, 2019. "Sanctioning, selection, and pivotality in voting: theory and experimental results," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 330-357, September.
    14. Aranson Peter H., 1990. "Rational Ignorance In Politics, Economics And Law," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 25-42, January.
    15. Sugato Dasgupta, 2009. "The disciplining role of repeated elections: some experimental evidence," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2), pages 165-190.

    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. Kenneth Collier & Peter Ordeshook & Kenneth Williams, 1989. "The rationally uninformed electorate: Some experimental evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 3-29, January.
    2. Pierre-Guillaume Méon, 2006. "Majority voting with stochastic preferences: The whims of a committee are smaller than the whims of its members," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 207-216, September.
    3. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2012. "Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition," Working Papers 124, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    4. Denter, Philipp & Sisak, Dana, 2015. "Do polls create momentum in political competition?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 1-14.
    5. Michael K Miller, 2011. "Seizing the mantle of change: Modeling candidate quality as effectiveness instead of valence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 23(1), pages 52-68, January.
    6. Jon X. Eguia & Antonio Nicolò, 2011. "On the Efficiency of Partial Information in Elections," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 234, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    7. Boukouras, Aristotelis & Jennings, Will & Li, Lunzheng & Maniadis, Zacharias, 2023. "Can biased polls distort electoral results? Evidence from the lab," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    8. Ignacio Ortuño Ortín, 1999. "- A Model Of Voting With Incomplete Information And Opinion Polls," Working Papers. Serie AD 1999-25, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    9. Tanner, Thomas Cole, 1994. "The spatial theory of elections: an analysis of voters' predictive dimensions and recovery of the underlying issue space," ISU General Staff Papers 1994010108000018174, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    10. Fuchs, Dieter, 1997. "Kriterien demokratischer Performanz in Liberalen Demokratien," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Institutions and Social Change FS III 97-203, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    11. Melvin J. Hinich & Michael C. Munger, 1992. "A Spatial Theory of Ideology," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 4(1), pages 5-30, January.
    12. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    13. 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.
    14. Brian Knight & Nathan Schiff, 2010. "Momentum and Social Learning in Presidential Primaries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(6), pages 1110-1150.
    15. Piketty, Thomas, 1999. "The information-aggregation approach to political institutions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 791-800, April.
    16. Thomas R. Palfrey, 2005. "Laboratory Experiments in Political Economy," Working Papers 91, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    17. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2012. "Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition," Working Papers 46, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    18. Camille Cornand & Frank Heinemann, 2014. "Measuring agents’ reaction to private and public information in games with strategic complementarities," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(1), pages 61-77, March.
    19. Royce Carroll & Henry A. Kim, 2010. "Party Government and the “Cohesive Power of Public Plunder”," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(1), pages 34-44, January.
    20. Adam Meirowitz, 2005. "Keeping the other candidate guessing: Electoral competition when preferences are private information," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 299-318, March.

    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:kap:pubcho:v:53:y:1987:i:2:p:101-130. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.