IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15220.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What is the probability your vote will make a difference?

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Gelman
  • Nate Silver
  • Aaron Edlin

Abstract

One of the motivations for voting is that one vote can make a difference. In a presidential election, the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability that your state is necessary for an electoral college win, times the probability the vote in your state is tied in that event. We computed these probabilities a week before the 2008 presidential election, using state-by-state election forecasts based on the latest polls. The states where a single vote was most likely to matter are New Mexico, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Colorado, where your vote had an approximate 1 in 10 million chance of determining the national election outcome. On average, a voter in America had a 1 in 60 million chance of being decisive in the presidential election.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Gelman & Nate Silver & Aaron Edlin, 2009. "What is the probability your vote will make a difference?," NBER Working Papers 15220, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15220
    Note: LE PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15220.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Stephen Hansen & Thomas Palfrey & Howard Rosenthal, 1987. "The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 15-33, January.
    3. 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.
    4. Douglas Hibbs, 2008. "Implications of the ‘bread and peace’ model for the 2008 US presidential election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 1-10, October.
    5. 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.
    6. Aaron Edlin & Andrew Gelman & Noah Kaplan, 2007. "Voting as a Rational Choice," Rationality and Society, , vol. 19(3), pages 293-314, August.
    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. Jared Barton & Marco Castillo & Ragan Petrie, 2014. "What Persuades Voters? A Field Experiment on Political Campaigning," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(574), pages 293-326, February.
    2. Christa N. Brunnschweiler & Colin Jennings & Ian A. MacKenzie, 2012. "Rebellion against Reason? A Study of Expressive Choice and Strikes," Working Paper Series 13012, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
    3. Brad R. Taylor, 2016. "Exit and the Epistemic Quality of Voice," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 133-144, June.
    4. Brad R. Taylor, 2020. "The psychological foundations of rational ignorance: biased heuristics and decision costs," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 70-88, March.
    5. Robert S. Goldfarb & Lee Sigelman, 2010. "Does ‘Civic Duty’ ‘Solve’ The Rational Choice Voter Turnout Puzzle?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 275-300, July.
    6. Shayo, Moses & Harel, Alon, 2012. "Non-consequentialist voting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 299-313.
    7. Nicholas Janetos, 2017. "Voting as a signal of education," PIER Working Paper Archive 17-010, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 May 2017.
    8. Daniel J. Smith, 2020. "Turn-taking in office," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 205-226, June.

    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. Andrew Gelman & Nate Silver & Aaron Edlin, 2012. "What Is The Probability Your Vote Will Make A Difference?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 50(2), pages 321-326, April.
    2. Dan Usher, 2014. "An alternative explanation of the chance of casting a pivotal vote," Rationality and Society, , vol. 26(1), pages 105-138, February.
    3. Ozgur Evren, 2009. "Altruism, Turnout and Strategic Voting Behavior," Levine's Working Paper Archive 814577000000000309, David K. Levine.
    4. Evren, Özgür, 2012. "Altruism and voting: A large-turnout result that does not rely on civic duty or cooperative behavior," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(6), pages 2124-2157.
    5. Lyytikäinen, Teemu & Tukiainen, Janne, 2019. "Are voters rational?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 230-242.
    6. Gintis, Herbert, 2016. "Homo Ludens: Social rationality and political behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 126(PB), pages 95-109.
    7. Marco Faravelli & Randall Walsh, 2011. "Smooth Politicians And Paternalistic Voters: A Theory Of Large Elections," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000250, David K. Levine.
    8. Lirong Xia, 2020. "How Likely Are Large Elections Tied?," Papers 2011.03791, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    9. Alan Gerber & Mitchell Hoffman & John Morgan & Collin Raymond, 2020. "One in a Million: Field Experiments on Perceived Closeness of the Election and Voter Turnout," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 287-325, July.
    10. Ján Palguta, 2011. "Voting Experiments: Measuring Vulnerability of Voting Procedures to Manipulation," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 5(3), pages 324-345, November.
    11. Scott Orford & Colin Railings & Michael Thrasher & Galina Borisyuk, 2011. "Changes in the Probability of Voter Turnout When Resiting Polling Stations: A Case Study in Brent, UK," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 29(1), pages 149-169, February.
    12. Valentina A. Bali & Lindon J. Robison & Richard Winder, 2020. "What Motivates People to Vote? The Role of Selfishness, Duty, and Social Motives When Voting," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, October.
    13. Avi Ben-Bassat & Momi Dahan, 2012. "Social identity and voting behavior," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 193-214, April.
    14. Rodrigo Schneider & Diloá Athias & Mauricio Bugarin, 2019. "Does enfranchisement affect fiscal policy? Theory and empirical evidence on Brazil," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 389-412, December.
    15. Roland Iwan Luttens & Marie-Anne Valfort, 2012. "Voting for Redistribution under Desert-Sensitive Altruism," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(3), pages 881-907, September.
    16. 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.
    17. Louis Kaplow & Scott Duke Kominers, 2020. "On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout," NBER Working Papers 26913, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Erik Peterson & Shanto Iyengar, 2021. "Partisan Gaps in Political Information and Information‐Seeking Behavior: Motivated Reasoning or Cheerleading?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(1), pages 133-147, January.
    19. Joan Esteban & Debraj Ray, 2011. "Linking Conflict to Inequality and Polarization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1345-1374, June.
    20. Cameron Guage & Feng Fu, 2021. "Asymmetric Partisan Voter Turnout Games," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 738-758, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • K0 - Law and Economics - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:15220. 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.