Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-rkzlw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-05T15:24:52.823Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Who Votes More Strategically?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2020

ANDREW C. EGGERS Open the ORCID record for ANDREW C. EGGERS [Opens in a new window]  and
NICK VIVYAN Open the ORCID record for NICK VIVYAN [Opens in a new window]
ANDREW C. EGGERS*
Affiliation:
Nuffield College, University of Oxford
NICK VIVYAN*
Affiliation:
Durham University
*
*Andrew C. Eggers, Nuffield College and Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, andrew.eggers@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.
†Nick Vivyan, School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, nick.vivyan@durham.ac.uk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Strategic voting is an important explanation for aggregate political phenomena, but we know little about how strategic voting varies across types of voters. Are richer voters more strategic than poorer voters? Does strategic behavior vary with age, education, gender, or political leaning? The answers may be important for assessing how well an electoral system represents different preferences in society. We introduce a new approach to measuring and comparing strategic voting across voters that can be broadly applied, given appropriate survey data. In recent British elections, we find that older voters vote more strategically than younger voters and that richer voters vote more strategically than poorer voters, even as strategic behavior varies little across the education level. The differences in strategic voting by age and income are smaller than observed differences in turnout by age and income, but they tend to exacerbate these better-known inequalities in political participation.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 114 , Issue 2 , May 2020 , pp. 470 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2020 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

We thank Markus Wagner, Karine Van Der Straeten, Dimitri Landa, Rob Johns, Dan Rubenson, Steve Fisher, David Myatt, Martin Elff, Steve Reed, Jack Blumenau, and seminar audiences at Dartmouth College, the University of Nottingham, Sciences-Po Paris, the University of Tokyo, University College London, the London School of Economics, the University of Zurich, the Higher School of Economics (Moscow), the University of Rochester, APSA 2016, and EPSA 2017 for useful comments. Replication files are available on the American Political Science Review Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/E5KOKE.

References

REFERENCES

Abramson, Paul R., Aldrich, John H., Diamond, Matthew, Diskin, Abraham, Indridason, Indridi H., Lee, Daniel J., and Levine, Renan. 2010. “Comparing Strategic Voting Under FPTP and PR.” Comparative Political Studies 43 (1): 61–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abramson, Paul R., Aldrich, John H., Paolino, Phil, and Rohde, David W.. 1992. “‘Sophisticated’ Voting in the 1988 Presidential Primaries.” American Political Science Review 86 (1): 55–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarez, R. Michael, Boehmke, Frederick J., and Nagler, Jonathan. 2006. “Strategic Voting in British Elections.” Electoral Studies 25 (1): 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarez, R. Michael, and Nagler, Jonathan. 2000. “A New Approach for Modelling Strategic Voting in Multiparty Elections.” British Journal of Political Science 30 (1): 57–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Artabe, Alaitz, and Gardeazabal, Javier. 2014. “Strategic Votes and Sincere Counterfactuals.” Political Analysis 22 (2): 243–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bargsted, Matias A., and Kedar, Orit. 2009. “Coalition-Targeted Duvergerian Voting: How Expectations Affect Voter Choice under Proportional Representation.” American Journal of Political Science 53 (2): 307–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bélanger, Éric, and Meguid, Bonnie M.. 2008. “Issue Salience, Issue Ownership, and Issue-Based Vote Choice.” Electoral Studies 27 (3): 477–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Jerome H. 1978. “The Multicandidate Calculus of Voting: Application to Canadian Federal Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 22 (3): 609–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blais, André, and Nadeau, Richard. 1996. “Measuring Strategic Voting: A Two-Step Procedure.” Electoral Studies 15 (1): 39–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brazier, John, Ratcliffe, Julie, Saloman, Joshua, and Tsuchiya, Aki. 2016. Measuring and Valuing Health Benefits for Economic Evaluation. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Rosie, Childs, Sarah, and Lovenduski, Joni. 2009. “Do women Need Women Representatives?” British Journal of Political Science 40 (1): 171–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castanheira, Micael. 2003. “Why Vote for Losers?” Journal of the European Economic Association 1 (5): 1207–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Harold, Stewart, Marianne C., Sanders, David, and Whiteley, Paul F.. 2006. “British Election Study 2005: Internet Rolling Campaign Panel Data.” UK Data Service. SN: 5493. doi: http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-5496-1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Gary W. 1997. Making Votes Count. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denver, David, Christopher, Carman, and Johns, Robert. 2012. Elections and Voters in Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dolan, Paul, and Sutton, Matthew. 1997. “Mapping Visual Analogue Scale Health State Valuations onto Standard Gamble and Time Trade-Off Values.” Social Science & Medicine 44 (10): 1519–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dowding, Keith, and Van Hees, Martin. 2008. “In Praise of Manipulation.” British Journal of Political Science 38 (1): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drummond, Michael F., Sculpher, Mark J., Claxton, Karl, Stoddart, Greg L., and Torrance, George W.. 2015. Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Duch, Raymond M., May, Jeff, and Armstrong, David A.. 2010. “Coalition-Directed Voting in Multiparty Democracies.” American Political Science Review 104 (4): 698–719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duverger, M. 1954. Political Parties. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Evans, Geoffrey. 1994. “Tactical Voting and Labour's Prospects.” In Labour’s Last Chance? eds. Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell, and John Curtice. Dartmouth: Aldershot, 65–84.Google Scholar
Evans, Geoffrey. 2002. “On the Validation of Measures of Strategic Motivations: A Critical Comment on Alvarez and Nagler.” British Journal of Political Science 32 (1): 185–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Geoffrey, and Heath, Anthony. 1993. “A Tactical Error in the Analysis of Tactical Voting: A Response to Niemi, Whitten and Franklin.” British Journal of Political Science 23 (1): 131–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fieldhouse, Edward, Green, Jane, Evans, Geoffrey, Schmitt, Hermann, van der Eijk, Cees, Mellon, Jon, and Prosser, Chris. 2017. “British Election Study Internet Combined Internet Panel Waves 1–13.” doi: 10.15127/1.293723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fieldhouse, Edward, Shryne, Nick, and Pickles, Andrew. 2007. “Strategic Voting and Constituency Context: Modelling Party Preference and Vote in Multiparty Elections.” Political Geography 26: 159–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Stephen D. 2001. “Extending the Rational Voter Theory of Tactical Voting.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. http://users.ox.ac.uk/∼nuff0084/fishermw.pdfGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Stephen D. 2004. “Definition and Measurement of Tactical Voting: The Role of Rational Choice.” British Journal of Political Science 34 (1): 152–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Stephen D., and Myatt, David P.. 2017. “Strategic Voting in Plurality Rule Elections.” Working Paper. http://dpmyatt.org/uploads/marginal-and-contention-2017-jul.pdfGoogle Scholar
Ford, Robert, and Goodwin, Matthew J.. 2014. Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, Mark, Niemi, Richard, and Whitten, Guy. 1994. “The Two Faces of Tactical Voting.” British Journal of Political Science 24 (4): 549–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frigyik, Bela A., Kapila, Amol, and Gupta, Maya R.. 2010. Introduction to the Dirichlet Distribution and Related Processes. UWEE Technical Report UWEETR-2010-0006 Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington. http://mayagupta.org/publications/FrigyikKapilaGuptaIntroToDirichlet.pdfGoogle Scholar
Gallego, Aina. 2014. Unequal Political Participation Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelman, Andrew. 2008. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Good, Irving J., and Mayer, Lawrence S.. 1975. “Estimating the Efficacy of a Vote.” Behavioral Science 20 (1): 25–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gschwend, Thomas. 2007. “Ticket-Splitting and Strategic Voting under Mixed Electoral Rules: Evidence from Germany.” European Journal of Political Research 46 (1): 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Andrew B., and Snyder, James M. Jr. 2015. “Information and Wasted Votes: A Study of the U.S. Primary Elections.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 10: 433–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamlin, Alan, and Jennings, Colin. 2011. “Expressive Political Behaviour: Foundations, Scope and Implications.” British Journal of Political Science 41 (3): 645–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanretty, Chris, Lauderdale, Benjamin, and Vivyan, Nick. 2016. “Combining National and Constituency Polling for Forecasting.” Electoral Studies 41: 239–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Anthony, and Evans, Geoffrey. 1994. “Tactical Voting: Concepts, Measurement and Findings.” British Journal of Political Science 24 (4): 557–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Anthony, Jowell, Roger, Curtice, John, Evans, Geoff, Field, Julia, and Witherspoon, Sharon. 1991. Understanding Political Change: The British Voter 1964–1987. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Herrmann, M., Munzert, S., and Selb, P.. 2015. “Determining the Effect of Strategic Voting on Election Results.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A 179 (2): 583–605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, Dale T. 1982. “A Model for Strategic Voting.” SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics 42 (4): 751–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inglehart, Ronald, and Norris, Pippa. 2017. “Trump and the Populist Authoritarian Parties: The Silent Revolution in Reverse.” Perspectives on Politics 15 (2): 443–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karp, Jeffrey A., Vowles, Jack, Banducci, Susan A., and Donovan, Todd. 2002. “Strategic Voting, Party Activity, and Candidate Effects: Testing Explanations for Split Voting in New Zealand’s New Mixed System.” Electoral Studies 21 (1): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kasara, Kimuli, and Suryanarayan, Pavithra. 2015. “When Do the Rich Vote Less Than the Poor and Why? Explaining Turnout Inequality across the World.” American Journal of Political Science 59 (3): 613–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kawai, Kei, and Watanabe, Yasutora. 2013. “Inferring Strategic Voting.” The American Economic Review 103 (2): 624–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiewiet, D. Roderick. 2013. “The Ecology of Tactical Voting in Britain.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties 23 (1): 86–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kselman, Daniel, and Niou, Emerson. 2010. “Strategic Voting in Plurality Elections.” Political Analysis 18 (2): 227–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lijphart, Arend. 1997. “Unequal Participation: Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1996.” American Political Science Review 91 (1): 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loewen, Peter John, Hinton, Kelly, and Sheffer, Lior. 2015. “Beauty Contests and Strategic Voting.” Electoral Studies 38: 38–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarty, Nolan, Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 2006. Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Merolla, Jennifer L., and Stephenson, Laura B.. 2007. “Strategic Voting in Canada: A Cross Time Analysis.” Electoral Studies 26 (2): 235–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myatt, David P. 2007. “On the Theory of Strategic Voting.” The Review of Economic Studies 74 (1): 255–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myatt, David P., and Fisher, Stephen D.. 2002. “Everything Is Uncertain and Uncertainty Is Everything: Strategic Voting in Simple Plurality Elections.” Number 115, Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series. Oxford. https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/working_papers/paper115.pdfGoogle Scholar
Niemi, Richard G., Whitten, Guy, and Franklin, Mark N.. 1992. “Constituency Characteristics, Individual Characteristics and Tactical Voting in the 1987 British General Election.” British Journal of Political Science 22 (2): 229–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palfrey, Thomas R. 1989. Models of Strategic Choice in Politics. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press.Google Scholar
Piketty, Thomas. 2000. “Voting as Communicating.” The Review of Economic Studies 67 (1): 169–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prosser, Christopher, Fieldhouse, Edward A., Green, Jane, Mellon, Jonathan, and Evans, Geoffrey. 2018. “Tremors but No Youthquake: Measuring Changes in the Age and Turnout Gradients at the 2015 and 2017 British General Elections.” Available at SSRN 3111839.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanders, David, and Whiteley, Paul F.. 2014. “British Election Study 2010: Campaign Internet Data.” UK Data Service. SN: 7350. doi: http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-7530-1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, Giovanni. 1968. Political Development and Political Engineering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smets, Kaat, and van Ham, Carolien. 2013. “The Embarrassment of Riches? A Meta-Analysis of Individual-Level Research on Voter Turnout.” Electoral Studies 32 (2): 344–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spenkuch, Jörg L. 2018. “Expressive vs. Strategic Voters: An Empirical Assessment.” Journal of Public Economics 165: 73–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swaddle, Kevin, and Heath, Anthony. 1989. “Official and Reported Turnout in the British General Election of 1987.” British Journal of Political Science 19 (4): 537–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verba, Sidney, Schlozman, Kay Lehman, and Brady, Henry E.. 1995. Voice and equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfinger, Raymond E., and Rosenstone, Steven J.. 1980. Who Votes? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Eggers and Vivyan Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/E5KOKE
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Eggers and Vivyan supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Eggers and Vivyan supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 693.2 KB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.