IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/13562.html

Voting as a Rational Choice: Why and How People Vote to Improve the Well-Being of Others

Author

Listed:
  • Aaron Edlin
  • Andrew Gelman
  • Noah Kaplan

Abstract

For voters with "social" preferences, the expected utility of voting is approximately independent of the size of the electorate, suggesting that rational voter turnouts can be substantial even in large elections. Less important elections are predicted to have lower turnout, but a feedback mechanism keeps turnout at a reasonable level under a wide range of conditions. The main contributions of this paper are: (1) to show how, for an individual with both selfish and social preferences, the social preferences will dominate and make it rational for a typical person to vote even in large elections;(2) to show that rational socially-motivated voting has a feedback mechanism that stabilizes turnout at reasonable levels (e.g., 50% of the electorate); (3) to link the rational social-utility model of voter turnout with survey findings on socially-motivated vote choice.

Suggested Citation

  • Aaron Edlin & Andrew Gelman & Noah Kaplan, 2007. "Voting as a Rational Choice: Why and How People Vote to Improve the Well-Being of Others," NBER Working Papers 13562, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13562
    Note: LE POL
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13562.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alvarez, R. Michael & Nagler, Jonathan, 2000. "A New Approach for Modelling Strategic Voting in Multiparty Elections," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(1), pages 57-75, January.
    2. Bendor, Jonathan & Diermeier, Daniel & Ting, Michael, 2003. "A Behavioral Model of Turnout," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(2), pages 261-280, May.
    3. Mulligan, Casey B & Hunter, Charles G, 2003. "The Empirical Frequency of a Pivotal Vote," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 116(1-2), pages 31-54, July.
    4. repec:cup:apsrev:v:62:y:1968:i:01:p:25-42_11 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Chamberlain, Gary & Rothschild, Michael, 1981. "A note on the probability of casting a decisive vote," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 152-162, August.
    6. repec:cup:apsrev:v:62:y:1968:i:1:p:25-42_1 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. repec:cup:apsrev:v:68:y:1974:i:02:p:525-536_11 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. John C. Harsanyi, 1955. "Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(4), pages 309-309.
    9. Tikva Darvish & Jacob Rosenberg, 1988. "The economic model of voter participation: A further test," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 185-192, February.
    10. Schlozman, Kay Lehman & Verba, Sidney & Brady, Henry E., 1995. "Participation's Not a Paradox: The View from American Activists," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 1-36, January.
    11. Meehl, Paul E., 1977. "The Selfish Voter Paradox and the Thrown-Away Vote Argument," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(1), pages 11-30, March.
    12. Kramer, Gerald H., 1983. "The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate- versus Individual-level Findings on Economics and Elections, and Sociotropic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 92-111, March.
    13. Feddersen, Timothy J & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1996. "The Swing Voter's Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 408-424, June.
    14. Yoram Barzel & Eugene Silberberg, 1973. "Is the act of voting rational?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 51-58, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Aaron Edlin & Andrew Gelman & Noah Kaplan, 2007. "Voting as a Rational Choice," Rationality and Society, , vol. 19(3), pages 293-314, August.
    2. Edlin, Aaron & Gelman, Andrew & Kaplan, Noah, 2008. "Voting as a Rational Choice," Berkeley Program in Law and Economics, Working Paper Series qt0x3780rb, Berkeley Program in Law and Economics.
    3. Thomas Schwartz, 1987. "Your vote counts on account of the way it is counted: An institutional solution to the paradox of not voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 101-121, January.
    4. Julio Rotemberg, 2009. "Attitude-dependent altruism, turnout and voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 140(1), pages 223-244, July.
    5. Lyytikäinen, Teemu & Tukiainen, Janne, 2019. "Are voters rational?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 230-242.
    6. Lirong Xia, 2020. "How Likely Are Large Elections Tied?," Papers 2011.03791, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    7. Londregan, John & Vindigni, Andrea, 2006. "Voting as a Credible Threat," Papers 10-04-2006, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    8. Panova, Elena, 2015. "A passion for voting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 44-65.
    9. Hans Gersbach, 2002. "Democratic Mechanisms: Double Majority Rules and Flexible Agenda Costs," CESifo Working Paper Series 749, CESifo.
    10. Castanheira, Micael, 2003. "Victory margins and the paradox of voting," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 817-841, November.
    11. Cameron Guage & Feng Fu, 2021. "Asymmetric Partisan Voter Turnout Games," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 738-758, December.
    12. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    13. Sebastian Garmann, 2020. "Political efficacy and the persistence of turnout shocks," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 411-429, November.
    14. Abdul Noury, 2004. "Abstention in Daylight: Strategic Calculus of Voting in the European Parliament," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 179-211, October.
    15. David K. Levine & Andrea Mattozzi, 2020. "Voter Turnout with Peer Punishment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(10), pages 3298-3314, October.
    16. Spenkuch, Jörg, 2013. "On the Extent of Strategic Voting," MPRA Paper 50198, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Acharya, Avidit, 2016. "Information aggregation failure in a model of social mobility," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 257-272.
    18. Tyran, Jean-Robert & Sausgruber, Rupert, 2006. "A little fairness may induce a lot of redistribution in democracy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 469-485, February.
    19. de Mouzon, Olivier & Laurent, Thibault & Le Breton, Michel & Moyouwou, Issofa, 2020. "“One Man, One Vote” Part 1: Electoral Justice in the U.S. Electoral College: Banzhaf and Shapley/Shubik versus May," TSE Working Papers 20-1074, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    20. Andrés A. Acuna-Duarte, 2017. "Electoral apathy among Chilean youth: New evidence for the voter registration dilemma," Estudios Gerenciales, Universidad Icesi, vol. 33(145), pages 341-351.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Economic Logic blog

    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:nbr:nberwo:13562. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.