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Preference intensity representation: strategic overstating in large elections

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  • Matías Núñez
  • Jean Laslier

Abstract

If voters vote strategically, is it useful to offer them the possibility of expressing nuanced opinions, or would they always overstate the intensity of their preferences? For additive voting rules, say that a ballot is extremal if it is neither abstention-like nor can be expressed as a mixture of the available ballots. We give a sufficient condition for strategic equivalence: if two rules share the same set of extremal ballots (up to an homothetic transformation), they are strategically equivalent in large elections. This condition is also necessary for the strategic equivalence of positional rules. These results do not hold for small electorates. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Matías Núñez & Jean Laslier, 2014. "Preference intensity representation: strategic overstating in large elections," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(2), pages 313-340, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:42:y:2014:i:2:p:313-340
    DOI: 10.1007/s00355-013-0728-0
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Strategic voting; Voting equilibria; D70; D72;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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