The race may be close but my horse is going to win: Wish fulfillment in the 1980 presidential election

Uhlaner, Carole Jean; Grofman, Bernard

doi:10.1007/bf00987179

Cited by 74 publications

(41 citation statements)

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“…A simple hypothesis is that voters from Obama‐supporting states will express more positive expectations of Obama's chances, as they become influenced by their associates' optimism and surrounding signs of political support (Uhlaner and Grofman ). As Granberg and Holmberg (, 149) claim, voters may tell themselves, “[a]s my state goes, so goes the nation.” In this view, WT is contagious and mutually reinforcing, just as Sunstein () argues that being surrounded by like‐minded associates increases opinion extremism.…”

Section: Wishful Thinking In Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A simple hypothesis is that voters from Obama-supporting states will express more positive expectations of Obama's chances, as they become influenced by their associates' optimism and surrounding signs of political support (Uhlaner and Grofman 1986). As Granberg and Holmberg (1988, 149) claim, voters may tell themselves, "[a]s my state goes, so goes the nation."…”

Section: Our Theoretical Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

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Citizen Forecasts of the 2008U.S. Presidential Election

Miller

Wang²,

Kulkarni

et al. 2012

Politics & Policy

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Section: Wishful Thinking In Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Our Theoretical Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen Forecasts of the 2008U.S. Presidential Election

Miller

Wang²,

Kulkarni

et al. 2012

Politics & Policy

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“…This raises questions about the rationality of voters’ expectations. There is clearly a substantial amount of wishful thinking (Uhlaner and Grofman, 1986; Blais and Turgeon, 2002). The mean percentage votes obtained by the winner, the top contender and the third candidate in the 1988 election were 45, 35, and 15 percent respectively.…”

Section: Why Do Most Third Party Supporters Vote Sincerely?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why is there so Little Strategic Voting in Canadian Plurality Rule Elections?

Blais

2002

Political Studies

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Using the 1988 Canadian Election Study I examine why there was only restricted strategic voting in single-member district plurality elections. In that election 19 percent of Canadian voters preferred the party that actually finished third in their constituency, but among these third party supporters only one in eight decided to vote strategically for one of the top two contenders. Strategic voting was relatively rare for two key reasons. First, many third party supporters had a strong preference for their party over all others and were therefore reluctant to rally to either of the top two contenders. Second, many overestimated their party's chance of winning and as a consequence did not feel that their vote would be wasted.In 1951, Maurice Duverger stated what he called a sociological law: 'the simple majority, single ballot system favors the two-party system'. 1 Why should a plurality rule voting method produce a two-party system? Duverger referred to two effects of the plurality rule, the mechanical effect, whereby small parties are systematically underrepresented in Parliament, and the psychological effect, whereby voters do not want to waste their vote on parties that have no chance of winning. The psychological effect induces voters to vote strategically. Cox (1997, p. 71) provides the standard characterization of a strategic (or tactical) voter in a plurality election: 'Some voter, whose favorite candidate has a poor chance of winning, notices that she has a preference between the top two candidates; she then rationally decides to vote for the most preferred of these top two competitors rather than for her overall favorite, because the latter vote has a much smaller chance of actually affecting the outcome than the former'. In a three-way race, then, a strategic voter is someone who votes for her second preference because she perceives that candidate to have better chances of winning than her first preference (Blais and Nadeau, 1996). The existence of strategic voting has been established by a number of empirical studies (for a review, see Alvarez and Nagler (2000)). These studies indicate, however, that there is relatively little strategic voting, typically around 5 percent. 2 In this paper, I seek to understand why relatively few voters cast a strategic vote.The best way here is to focus on those voters who prefer the candidate that finishes third in their constituency. Previous analyses of strategic voting examined the behavior of the entire electorate. But, in theory at least, only supporters of the 'third' candidate in a given constituency have to decide to vote sincerely for their first choice or strategically for their second choice. I use the 1988 Canadian Election Study (CES) because it includes direct questions about voters' perceptions of the various parties' chances of winning in their constituency. 3 As Cox (1997) has shown, these perceptions are central in the decision to cast or not to cast a strate-

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“…It is very well known from the literature (cf. Babad 1997;Uhlaner & Grofman 1986) that party supporters normally overestimate the electoral chances of their own party. Therefore, we compared the overall marginals with the frequency distributions for the respective party adherents.…”

Section: Data On Vote Intentions Party and Coalition Preferences Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral behaviour in a two‐vote system: Incentives for ticket splitting in German Bundestag elections

Pappi

Thurner

2002

European J Political Res

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The ballot structure of German Bundestag elections allows two votes: one for a constituency candidate and the second for a party list. About one-fifth of the voters usually split their ticket. Several hypotheses are derived about incentives for ticket splitting and tested with survey data from a 1998 pre-election poll. We argue that an explanation of split tickets in the German system has to take into account both party rankings and coalition preferences. One of the most important incentives is a preference or top ranking of a minor party like the FDP or Greens, if it is combined with a preference for a coalition with either the CDU/CSU or SPD. Contrary to this finding, the hypothesis of threshold insurance voting of CDU/CSU or SPD supporters choosing the party list of their prospective minor coalition partner is rejected for the 1998 election.

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The race may be close but my horse is going to win: Wish fulfillment in the 1980 presidential election

Cited by 74 publications

References 20 publications

Citizen Forecasts of the 2008U.S. Presidential Election

Citizen Forecasts of the 2008U.S. Presidential Election

Why is there so Little Strategic Voting in Canadian Plurality Rule Elections?

Electoral behaviour in a two‐vote system: Incentives for ticket splitting in German Bundestag elections

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