An experiment on coordination in multi-candidate elections: The importance of polls and election histories

Abstract

Do polls simply measure intended voter behavior or can they affect it and, thus, change election outcomes? Do candidate ballot positions or the results of previous elections affect voter behavior? We conduct several series of experimental, three-candidate elections and use the data to provide answers to these questions. In these elections, we pay subjects conditionally on election outcomes to create electorates with publicly known preferences. A majority (but less than two-thirds) of the voters are split in their preferences between two similar candidates, while a minority (but plurality) favor a third, dissimilar candidate. If all voters voted sincerely, the third candidate -a Condorcet loser -would win the elections. We find that pre-election polls significantly reduce the frequency with which the Condorcet loser wins. Further, the winning candidate is usually the majority candidate who is listed first on the poll and election ballots. The evidence also shows that a shared history enables majority voters to coordinate on one of their favored candidates in sequences of identical elections. With polls, majoritypreferred candidates often alternate as election winners.

The Runner-Up Effect

“…A key part of this argument is that the second-place "label" is a more likely focal than a third-place label. While this cannot be tested directly, it is consistent with behavior of voting experiments discussed in the introduction (Forsythe et al, 1993;Bouton et al, 2012). Moreover, a general tendency to coordinate on candidates with better previous performance is reasonable, and perhaps this norm is extended to the cases where the past differences in performance become very small ("at the cutoff").…”

“…We find that polling stations that tended to vote for the third-place candidate present larger vote shares for the runner-up in the next election, compared to polling stations that tended to vote for the winner or fourth-and lower-placed candidates, confirming the prediction. This finding is difficult to reconcile with an explanation based entirely on heuristics, since it would require third-place supporters to be disprop ortionately 8 In an experiment where voters coordinate on one out of two majority candidates in order to beat a minority candidate under plurality rule, Forsythe et al (1993) find that "a majority candidate who was ahead of the other in early elections tended to win the later elections, while the other majority candidate was driven out of subsequent races" (p. 235). Bouton et al (2012) find very similar results.…”

Le vote à l’Élection d’à côté

“…C'est pourquoi, jusqu'à récemment, la plupart des recherches sur le vote stratégique ont été menées aux États-Unis (Abramson et al, 1992 ;Burden, 2005), au Canada (Black, 1978 ;Blais et al, 2000 ;Merolla et Stephenson, 2007) et en Grande-Bretagne (Cain, 1978 ;Alvarez et al, 2006) Toutes ces études étant observationnelles, nous ne pouvons pas exclure la possibilité que l'apparente absence d'une différence soit en fait attribuable à l'omission d'un facteur exogène qui crée une non-corrélation fallacieuse. Quelques expériences antérieures ont étudié la propension à voter stratégi-quement en employant une méthodologie en laboratoire (voir Forsythe et al, 1993 ;Rietz, 2008 ;Tyszler, 2008), mais la plupart d'entre elles ont utilisé la même règle de vote, soit celle de la pluralité. Il existe quelques études comparant le vote stratégique dans le système pluralitaire et le système à deux tours (van der Straeten et al, 2010 ; et d'autres qui comparent le système pluralitaire et le système proportionnel (Labbé St-Vincent, 2013).…”

Information and Strategic Voting

“…example, with Duverger's law. 2 A special case occurs when there is a Condorcet loser (i.e., an alternative that would lose any pairwise vote against any other alternative) supported by a minority while a majority is divided between two other alternatives (Gerber et al 1988;Forsythe et al 1993Forsythe et al , 1996Cox 1997;Myatt and Fisher 2002;Palfrey 2006). The majority can avoid a victory by the Condorcet loser if the supporters of one of the two majority alternatives votes strategically for the second most preferred option.…”

“…Second, we will measure the impact of information about others' preferences. This is important, because whether or not voters vote strategically may depend on how much they know about other voters' preferences (Forsythe et al 1993(Forsythe et al , 1996. Outside the laboratory opinion polls serve to provide such information, which may help voters to coordinate on an alternative and win the election.…”