Beliefs and Voting Decisions: A Test of the Pivotal Voter Model

By John Duffy, Margit Tavits. 2008

180 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report results from a laboratory experiment testing the basic hypothesis embedded in various rational voter models that there is a direct correlation between the strength of an individual's belief that his or her vote will be pivotal and the likelihood that individual incurs the cost to vote. This belief is typically unobservable. In one of our experimental treatments we elicit these subjective beliefs using a proper scoring rule that induces truthful revelation of beliefs. This allows us to directly test the pivotal voter model. We find that a higher subjective probability of being pivotal increases the likelihood that an individual votes, but the probability thresholds used by subjects are not as crisp as the theory would predict. There is some evidence that individuals learn over time to adjust their beliefs to be more consistent with the historical frequency of pivotality. However, many subjects keep substantially overestimating their probability of being pivotal.

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6ddb45991dcd5eca7a8f2e47f28ba98098d64278

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Political Science and International Relations

1. Thomas R. Palfrey
2. Alvaro Sandroni
3. Timothy Feddersen

In Safety Research

1. Sean Gailmard
2. Alvaro Sandroni
3. Thomas R. Palfrey
4. Timothy Feddersen
5. Jacob K. Goeree

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Sean Gailmard
2. Alvaro Sandroni
3. Thomas R. Palfrey
4. Timothy Feddersen

Citations in the corpus

• Moral Bias in Large Elections: Theory and Experimental Evidence (2009, background): “5 See Levine and Palfrey (2007) and Duffy and Tavits (2006). subset of B types is designated as active and may either vote for A or B at a cost (c > 0), or abstain at no cost.”
• How Do Voters Respond to Information? Evidence from a Randomized Campaign (2013, unknown): “None of these (self-declared) individual characteristics is statistically different across treatment groups.(22) Table 1 summarizes the aggregate results at the precinct level.”
• Laboratory Experiments in Political Economy (2009, background): “A more recent experiment has explored the question of how voters in laboratory elections perceive the probability their vote will be pivotal, and how they act on these perceptions (Duffy & Tavits 2008).”