Explaining voter turnout patterns: An information theory

Matsusaka, John G.

doi:10.1007/bf01047803

Cited by 225 publications

(190 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Such results are robust to all of the di¤erent speci…cations of our empirical model and to di¤erent classi…cations of uninformed and swing voters (see 12 In our view, the overall evidence provided by our paper and that of those authors seems to suggest that, while in the presence of a limited number of voters (e.g., in a committee), individuals do take into account their pivotal probabilities, and thus their behavior is correctly captured by the swing voter's curse, in large elections this is not necessarily true anymore. Indeed, our results are consistent with the empirical predictions on the e¤ect of information on turnout implied by decision-theoretic models of voting behavior (Matsusaka, 1995). Hence, our empirical …ndings may simply imply that in large elections decision-theoretical models may be able to capture the behavior of voters better than game-theoretical models.…”

Section: Information and Electoral Participation: A Test Of The Swingsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…1 The most recent theories on the determinants of electoral participation have focused on the role of information, both in a decision-theoretic (Matsusaka, 1995) and in a game-theoretic framework (Feddersen andPesendorfer, 1996 and. The decision-theoretic approach predicts that, since the more con…dent a voter is about voting for the best candidate, the higher is her expected bene…t from voting, more informed voters are more likely to turn out (Matsusaka, 1995). On the other hand, by endogenizing the individual probability of being pivotal, Feddersen and Pesendorfer (1996) show that politically independent and uninformed voters su¤er from the swing voter's curse, i.e., they are better o¤ by abstaining than by voting for any of the competing candidates even when the cost of voting is zero.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In line with other studies (Deacon and Shapiro, 1975, Kahn andMatsusaka, 1997, Degan andMerlo, 2007), we construct a uni…ed empirical framework in which both the participation decision and the voting decision are taken into account. We then employ this framework to empirically investigate the recent theoretical literature concerning the role of information on voter turnout (Matsusaka, 1995, Feddersen and Pesendorfer, 1996) and the trade-o¤ between strategic and communicative motives for voting (Piketty, 2000, Razin, 2003.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Electoral participation and communicative voting in Europe

Sobbrio

Navarra

2010

European Journal of Political Economy

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This paper provides an empirical investigation of electoral participation and communicative voting in 14 European countries. We estimate a multi-level voting process where individuals face a participation decision (whether to vote or abstain) and a voting decision (whether to vote strategically for a likely winner party or as communicating for a sure loser party). Our main …ndings can be summarized as follows. First, individuals who are either independent or uninformed are less likely to turnout. However, being both independent and uninformed does not have any statistically signi…cant e¤ect on electoral participation. Thus, our results question the empirical relevance of the swing voter's curse theory in large elections. Second, the probability of voting as communicating is positively related with the level of education and the degree of dissatisfaction with the political system. Finally, political preferences and institutional features characterizing the functioning of the political system and of the media market have a signi…cant e¤ect both on electoral participation and on the voting decision.JEL Classi…cation: D72, C25

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Section: Information and Electoral Participation: A Test Of The Swingsupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Electoral participation and communicative voting in Europe

Sobbrio

Navarra

2010

European Journal of Political Economy

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“…Recent formal models link information to voter participation (Matsusaka, 1995;Feddersen and Pesendorfer, 1996;Ghirardato and Katz, 2002). There is, however, little empirical evidence in support of these models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does political knowledge increase turnout? Evidence from the 1997 British general election

Larcinese

2007

Public Choice

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Acknowledgements: I am very grateful to Tim Besley for helpful discussions during all stages of this project and for comments and suggestions on a number of previous versions of this paper. I also wish to thank Oriana Bandiera, Richard Blundell, Harold Clarke, Keith Dowding, Guillaume Frechette, Cesar Martinelli, Maria Pia Monteduro, Imran Rasul, Leo Rizzo, Cristiana Vitale and Donald Wittman as well as participants in a number of meetings and seminars for their useful comments and suggestions. I remain the sole responsible for limits and errors of this work. Financial support from the European Commission under the TMR Scheme (Marie Curie Fellowship) and from ESRC is gratefully acknowledged. AbstractA number of recent formal models predict a positive effect of political knowledge on turnout. Both information acquisition and turnout, however, are likely to be determined by a similar set of variables, rendering hard the identification of a causal link in empirical investigations. Available empirical regularities should therefore be interpreted as mere correlations. I address this problem by using an instrumental variables approach, where the instruments are represented by various proxies of information supply on mass media. Using survey data from the 1997 British General Election Study, I show that political knowledge has a sizeable influence on the probability of voting and that mass media play an important role in influencing political participation.

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“…21 In contrast, the policy recommendation based on the estimated ethical model entails a much larger subsidy, equal to 143 according to the equilibrium calculation. 22 This is eleven times the subsidy recommended by the other three models to achieve the same target. In fact,…”

Section: 59 143mentioning

confidence: 99%

External validation of voter turnout models by concealed parameter recovery

Merlo

Palfrey

2018

Public Choice

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We conduct a model validation analysis of several behavioral models of voter turnout, using laboratory data. We call our method of model validation concealed parameter recovery, where estimation of a model is done under a veil of ignorance about some of the experimentally controlled parameters -in this case voting costs. We use quantal response equilibrium as the underlying, common structure for estimation, and estimate models of instrumental voting, altruistic voting, expressive voting, and ethical voting. All the models except the ethical model recover the concealed parameters reasonably well. We also report the results of a counterfactual analysis based on the recovered parameters, to compare the policy implications of the different models about the cost of a subsidy to increase turnout.

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Explaining voter turnout patterns: An information theory

Cited by 225 publications

References 29 publications

Electoral participation and communicative voting in Europe

Electoral participation and communicative voting in Europe

Does political knowledge increase turnout? Evidence from the 1997 British general election

External validation of voter turnout models by concealed parameter recovery

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