The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect

Hansen, Stephen; Palfrey, Thomas R.; Rosenthal, Howard

doi:10.1007/bf00116941

Cited by 107 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…However, whether this simple model of voting is consistent with the data is an empirical question. Hansen et al (1987) 1 For an overview of the literature, see Aldrich (1993Aldrich ( , 1997, Green and Shapiro (1994, ch. 4), and Matsusaka and Palda (1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-examining Voter Turnout in Large Elections

Taylor

Yıldırım

2005

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A well-known shortcoming of rational voter models is that the equilibrium probability that an individual votes converges to zero as the population of citizens tends to infinity. We show that this does not -as is often suggested -imply that equilibrium voter turnout is insignificant in the limit. We characterize limiting equilibrium turnout and show that it may actually be arbitrarily large. Indeed, expected equilibrium turnout is shown to be closely approximated by 1/ 2πc 2 , where c is the lowest possible realization of an individual's voting cost.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-examining Voter Turnout in Large Elections

Taylor

Yıldırım

2005

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A ballot proposition (or measure) is a proposed law or constitutional amendment which takes effect if a majority of the voters approve it. To the best of my knowledge, the only other closeness tests which use ballot propositions are Filer and Kenny (1980) and Hansen, Palfrey, and Rosenthal (1987).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Election closeness and voter turnout: Evidence from California ballot propositions

Matsusaka

1993

Public Choice

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. This paper uses a new data set of 885 California ballot propositions from 1912 through 1990 to test the hypothesis that voter turnout increases as an election becomes closer. Various measures of voter participation are regressed on various measures of election closeness. The main finding is that there is not a systematic relation between closeness and turnout. Two conclusions are drawn: (1) voters are not sensitive to the probability their votes are decisive, and (2) other studies which found higher turnout for close elections probably detected an increased mobilization of party elites in tight races.

show abstract

“…15 In the estimation, we ignore the actual costs drawn by the voters in each election, and we treat the upper bound of the distribution of voting costs as the concealed parameter of interest. 16 Recall that in the actual experiment, the distribution of voting costs  () was uniform on [0 55].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

External validation of voter turnout models by concealed parameter recovery

Merlo

Palfrey

2018

Public Choice

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect

Cited by 107 publications

References 16 publications

Re-examining Voter Turnout in Large Elections

Re-examining Voter Turnout in Large Elections

Election closeness and voter turnout: Evidence from California ballot propositions

External validation of voter turnout models by concealed parameter recovery

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About