People vote although their marginal gain from voting is zero. We contribute to the resolution of this paradox by presenting a model for equilibrium configuration of attitudes regarding the decision to vote. Each individual is seen as an element of a social network, within which pairs of individuals express ideas and attitudes, exerting mutual influence. We model the role of such networks in propagating the mutual influence across pairs of individuals. We show that it may suffice that a small set of individuals have a strong feeling about showing up to vote to generate a significant turnout in elections. * We benefited from the comments and suggestions of Vasco Santos, several seminar participants and an anonymous referee. They all contributed to considerably improve our work. The usual disclaimer applies.
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