Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T12:26:19.499Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Strategic Votes and Sincere Counterfactuals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Alaitz Artabe  and
Javier Gardeazabal
Alaitz Artabe
Affiliation:
Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico II, Universidad del País Vasco, Lehendakari Aguirre 83, 48015 Bilbao, Spain. e-mail: [email protected]
Javier Gardeazabal*
Affiliation:
Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico II, Universidad del País Vasco, Lehendakari Aguirre 83, 48015 Bilbao, Spain
*
e-mail: [email protected] (corresponding author)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The random utility model (RUM) of voting behavior can account for strategic voting by making use of proxy indicators that measure voter incentives to vote strategically. The contribution of this article is to propose a new method to estimate the RUM in the presence of strategic voters, without having to construct proxy measures of strategic voting incentives. Our method can be used to infer the counterfactual sincere vote of those who vote strategically and provides an estimate of the size of strategic voting. We illustrate the procedure using post-electoral survey data from Spain. Our calculations indicate that strategic voting in Spain is about 2.19%.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , Spring 2014 , pp. 243 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

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.)

Footnotes

Authors' note: We would like to thank Elena del Rey, Beatriz Gonzalez Lopez-Valcarcel, Thomas Gschwend, Annick Laruelle, Stefan Napel, Federico Valenciano, Donald Wittman, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the University of the Basque Country, University of California—Santa Cruz, and the Simposio de la Asociación Española de Economía 2011 in Malaga. Replication materials are available in the Political Analysis Dataverse dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/22991.

References

Abramson, P. R., Aldrich, J. H., Blais, A., Diamond, M., Diskin, A., Indridason, I. H., Lee, D. J., and Levine, R. 2010. Comparing strategic voting under FPTP and PR. Comparative Political Studies 43(1): 61–90.Google Scholar
Abramson, P. R., Aldrich, J. H., Paolino, P., and Rohde, D. W. 1992. “Sophisticated” voting in the 1988 presidential primaries. American Political Science Review 86(1): 55–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Achen, C., and Shively, P. 1995. Cross-level inference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Alvarez, R. M., Boehmke, F. J., and Nagler, J. 2006. Strategic voting in British elections. Electoral Studies 25: 1–19.Google Scholar
Alvarez, R. M., and Nagler, J. 2000. A new approach for modelling strategic voting in multiparty elections. British Journal of Political Science 30: 57–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Artabe, A., and Gardeazabal, J. 2013. Replication data for: Strategic votes and sincere counterfactual. http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/22991.Google Scholar
Bargsted, M. A., and Kedar, O. 2009. Coalition-targeted Duvergerian voting: How expectations affect voter choice under proportional representation. American Journal of Political Science 53: 307–23.Google Scholar
Blais, A., and Nadeu, R. 1996. Measuring strategic voting: A two-step procedure. Electoral Studies 15(1): 39–52.Google Scholar
Blais, A., Nadeu, R., Gidengil, E., and Nevitte, N. 2001. Measuring strategic voting in multiparty elections. Electoral Studies 20: 343–52.Google Scholar
Blais, A., Young, R., and Turcotte, M. 2005. Direct or indirect? Assessing two approaches to the measurement of strategic voting. Electoral Studies 24: 163–76.Google Scholar
Blinder, Alan S. 1973. Wage discrimination: Reduced form and structural estimates. Journal of Human Resources 8(4): 436–55.Google Scholar
Cain, B. E. 1978. Strategic voting in Britain. American Journal of Political Science 22(3): 639–55.Google Scholar
Cox, G. W., and Shugart, M. S. 1996. Strategic voting under proportional representation. Journal of Law, Economics & Organization 12(2): 299–324.Google Scholar
Dow, J., and Endersby, J. W. 2004. Multinomial probit and multinomial logit: A comparison of choice models for voting research. Electoral Studies 23: 107–22.Google Scholar
Duch, R. M., and Palmer, H. D. 2002. Strategic voting in post-communist democracy? British Journal Political Science 32: 63–91.Google Scholar
Felsentahl, D. S., and Brichta, A. 1985. Sincere and strategic voter: An Israeli study. Political Behavior 7(4): 311–24.Google Scholar
Fieldhouse, E., Shryane, N., and Pickles, A. 2007. Strategic voting and constituency context: Modelling party preference and vote in multiparty elections. Political Geography 26: 159–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, S. D. 2004. Definition and measurement of tactical voting: The role of rational choice. British Journal of Political Science 34: 152–66.Google Scholar
Franklin, M. N., Niemi, R. G., and Whitten, G. 1994. The two faces of tactical voting. British Journal of Political Science 24: 549–57.Google Scholar
Freedman, D. A., Klein, S. P., Sacks, J., Smyth, C. A., and Everett, C. G. 1991. Ecological regression and voting rights. Evaluation Review 15: 673–711.Google Scholar
Galbraith, J. W., and Rae, N. C. 1989. A test of the importance of tactical voting: Great Britain, 1987. British Journal of Political Science 19(01): 126–36.Google Scholar
Garcia Viñuela, E., and Artés, J. 2009. Una estimación del voto estratégico de Izquierda Unida al Partido Socialista en la elecciones generales del período 2000–2008. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas 128: 35–55.Google Scholar
Garcia Viñuela, E., and Artés, J. 2012. Strategic voting and effective representation thresholds: Evidence from three Spanish General Elections. European Journal of Political Research 51: 289–315.Google Scholar
Gschwend, T. 2007. Ticket-splitting and strategic voting under mixed electoral rules: Evidence from Germany. European Journal of Political Research 46: 1–23.Google Scholar
Gschwend, T., and Stoiber, M. 2012. Strategic voting in proportional systems: The case of Finland. Universität Mannheim Working Paper.Google Scholar
Heath, A., Curtice, J., Jowell, R., et al. 1991. Understanding political change: The British voter 1964–1987. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Herrmann, M., and Pappi, F. U. 2008. Strategic voting in German constituencies. Electoral Studies 27: 228–44.Google Scholar
Johnston, R. J., and Pattie, C. J. 1991. Tactical voting in Great Britain in 1983 and 1987: An alternative approach. British Journal of Political Science 21: 95–128.Google Scholar
Kim, H. M., and Kostadinova, T. 2011. Does tactical voting matter? The political impact of tactical voting in Canadian elections. International Area Studies Review 14(1): 49–72.Google Scholar
King, G. 1997. Solution to the ecological inference problem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kriesi, H. 1998. Straightforward and strategic voting in the elections for the Swiss Council of states in 1995. Electoral Studies 17(1): 45–59.Google Scholar
Kselman, D., and Niou, E. 2010. Strategic voting in plurality elections. Political Analysis 18: 227–44.Google Scholar
Lago, I. 2005. El voto estratégico en las elecciones generales en España, 1977–2000. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas.Google Scholar
Lago, I. 2008. Rational expectations or heuristics? Strategic voting in proportional representation systems. Party Politics 49–31:(1)14.Google Scholar
Lago, I. 2012. Strategic voting in proportional representation systems: Evidence from a natural experiment. Party Politics 18: 653–65.Google Scholar
Lanoue, D.J., and Bowler, S. 1992. The sources of tactical voting in British parliamentary elections, 1983–1987. Political Behavior 14(2): 141–57.Google Scholar
McCuen, B., and Morton, R. B. 2010. Tactical coalition voting and information in the laboratory. Electoral Studies 29: 316–28.Google Scholar
Meffert, M. F., and Gschwend, T. 2011. Polls, coalition signals and strategic voting: An experimental investigation of perceptions and effects. European Journal of Political Research 50: 636–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merolla, J. L., and Stephenson, L. B. 2007. Strategic voting in Canada: A cross-time analysis. Electoral Studies 26: 235–46.Google Scholar
Myatt, D. P. 2007. On the theory of strategic voting. Review of Economic Studies 74: 255–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niemi, R. G., Whitten, G., and Franklin, M. N. 1992. Constituency characteristics, individual characteristic and tactical voting in the 1987 British General Election. British Journal of Political Science 22: 229–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niemi, R. G., Whitten, G., and Franklin, M. N. 1992. People who live in glass houses: A response to Evans and Heath's critique of our note on tactical voting. British Journal of Political Science 23: 549–63.Google Scholar
Oaxaca, R. 1973. Male-female wage differentials in urban labor markets. International Economic Review 14(3): 693–709.Google Scholar
Robinson, W. S. 1950. Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review 15: 351–57.Google Scholar
Shikano, S., Herrmann, M., and Thurmer, P. W. 2009. Strategic voting under proportional representation: Threshold insurance in German elections. West European Politics 32(3): 634–59.Google Scholar
Slinko, A., and White, S. 2010. Proportional representation and strategic voters. Journal of Theoretical Politics 22: 301–32.Google Scholar
Spafford, D. 1972. Electoral systems and voters' behavior. Comparative Politics 3(1): 115–25.Google Scholar