This paper reports the first laboratory study of the swing voter's curse and provides insights on the larger theoretical and empirical literature on "pivotal voter" models. Our experiment controls for different information levels of voters, as well as the size of the electorate, the distribution of preferences and other theoretically relevant parameters. The design varies the share of partisan voters and the prior belief about a payoff relevant state of the world. Our results support the equilibrium predictions of the Feddersen-Pesendorfer model. The voters act as if they are aware of the swing voter's curse and adjust their behaviour to compensate. While the compensation is not complete and there is some heterogeneity in individual behaviour, we find that aggregate outcomes, such as efficiency, turnout and margin of victory, closely track the theoretical predictions. Copyright © 2009 The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

Increasingly, political scientists use the term 'experiment' or 'experimental' to describe their empirical research. One of the primary reasons for doing so is the advantage of experiments in establishing causal inferences. In this book, Rebecca B. Morton and Kenneth C. Williams discuss in detail how experiments and experimental reasoning with observational data can help researchers determine causality. They explore how control and random assignment mechanisms work, examining both the Rubin causal model and the formal theory approaches to causality. They also cover general topics in experimentation such as the history of experimentation in political science; internal and external validity of experimental research; types of experiments - field, laboratory, virtual, and survey - and how to choose, recruit, and motivate subjects in experiments. They investigate ethical issues in experimentation, the process of securing approval from institutional review boards for human subject research, and the use of deception in experimentation.

We examine how differences in the institutions that regulate candidate nomination procedures, specifically direct primary election laws, affect the types of candidates elected in nonpresidential American elections. We hypothesize that in more closed primary systems, control over candidate nominations by ideological extremists will translate into a higher likelihood that extreme candidates win in the general election. We hypothesize that in more open systems, participation by a wider spectrum of the electorate means that candidates must appeal to more moderate voters, leading to the election of more moderate candidates. Using pooled cross-section time-series regression analysis, we find that U.S. representatives from states with closed primaries take policy positions that are furthest from their district's estimated median voter's ideal positions. Representatives from states with semi-closed primaries are the most moderate. We conclude that the costs of strategic behavior created by electoral institutions have important consequences for electoral outcomes. 1. In this research we consider nominations to offices other than the presidency. Presidential nominations are characterized by a unique sequential state-by-state nomination process. Nominations via direct primary to congressional, state legislative, state executive, and local offices are characterized by common procedures which we describe below. 2. Ironically, after the Tashjian decision, the Republican Party removed the questionable provision from its bylaws and at the time of this writing, none of the state's major parties have opted to allow independents to participate in their primaries.

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Given the recent court rulings against racial gerrymandering, the effect of multimember district elections on minority representation is an important issue. We present a model of voting in double-member district elections with two majority candidates and one minority candidate and consider the voting equilibria under straight and cumulative voting. In straight voting, while an equilibrium always exists in which the two majority candidates are expected to win the two seats, minority candidates may be elected. In cumulative voting, minority candidate wins are also possible in equilibrium but are less likely when minority voters prefer one majority candidate over another. We then present experimental evidence showing that minority candidates win significantly more seats in cumulative than in straight voting elections. When minority voters perceive a substantial difference between the majority candidates, however, they are more likely to split their votes between the minority and majority candidates, winning fewer seats.