The Marginal Voter’s Curse*

Abstract

The swing voter's curse is useful for explaining patterns of voter participation, but arises because voters restrict attention to the rare event of a pivotal vote. Recent empirical evidence suggests that electoral margins in ‡uence policy outcomes, even away from the 50% threshold. If so, voters should also pay attention to the marginal impact of a vote. Adopting this assumption, we …nd that a marginal voter's curse gives voters a new reason to abstain, to avoid diluting the pool of information. The two curses have similar origins and exhibit similar patterns, but the marginal voter's curse is both stronger and more robust. In fact, the swing voter's curse turns out to be knife-edge: in large elections, a model with both pivotal and marginal considerations and a model with marginal considerations alone generate identical equilibrium behavior.JEL classi…cation: C72, D70 for helpful comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank Bruno Nogueira Lanzer for excellent assistance.

Unanimous rules in the laboratory

“…The dominance is economically strong and statistically signi…cant for 5 blue balls or more. 19 We have already established that when signals are biased (V2, U2, and CA2), Veto performs very well. What we …nd here is that Constructive Abstention performs very well too.…”

Get Rid of Unanimity Rule: The Superiority of Majority Rules with Veto Power

“…Second, it is connected to the literature that studies information aggregation in two-alternative decisions with strategic voters (see, e.g., Austen-Smith and Banks 1996;Feddersen and Pesendorfer 1996, 1997McLennan 1998;Myerson 1998;Chwe 1999;Coughlan 2000;Guarnaschelli, McKelvey, and Palfrey 2000;Maug and Yilmaz 2002;Austen-Smith and Feddersen 2006;Martinelli 2006;Gerardi and Yariv 2007;Battaglini, Morton, andPalfrey 2008, 2010;Van Weelden 2008;Bond and Eraslan 2009;Goeree and Yariv 2011;Mandler 2012;Bhattacharya 2013;McMurray 2013). Third, it is related to the literature studying properties of voting systems (see, e.g., Myerson and Weber 1993;Myerson 2000Myerson , 2002Piketty 2000;Dewan and Myatt 2007;Myatt 2007Myatt , 2015Ahn andOliveros 2012, 2014;Bouton and Castanheira 2012;Bouton 2013;Ekmekci and Lauermann 2015;Herrera, McMurray, and Llorente-Saguer 2015;Bouton, Castanheira, and Llorente-Saguer 2016).…”

Against All Odds: Tentative Steps toward Efficient Information Sharing in Groups

“…Voting against one's own signal seems to be a more widespread phenomenon that is also observed, e.g., by Bouton et al[46] or Herrera et al[47].…”