Voting Intention and Choices: Are Voters Always Rational and Deliberative?

Abstract

Human rationality–the ability to behave in order to maximize the achievement of their presumed goals (i.e., their optimal choices)–is the foundation for democracy. Research evidence has suggested that voters may not make decisions after exhaustively processing relevant information; instead, our decision-making capacity may be restricted by our own biases and the environment. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which humans in a democratic society can be rational when making decisions in a serious, complex situation–voting in a local political election. We believe examining human rationality in a political election is important, because a well-functioning democracy rests largely upon the rational choices of individual voters. Previous research has shown that explicit political attitudes predict voting intention and choices (i.e., actual votes) in democratic societies, indicating that people are able to reason comprehensively when making voting decisions. Other work, though, has demonstrated that the attitudes of which we may not be aware, such as our implicit (e.g., subconscious) preferences, can predict voting choices, which may question the well-functioning democracy. In this study, we systematically examined predictors on voting intention and choices in the 2014 mayoral election in Taipei, Taiwan. Results indicate that explicit political party preferences had the largest impact on voting intention and choices. Moreover, implicit political party preferences interacted with explicit political party preferences in accounting for voting intention, and in turn predicted voting choices. Ethnic identity and perceived voting intention of significant others were found to predict voting choices, but not voting intention. In sum, to the comfort of democracy, voters appeared to engage mainly explicit, controlled processes in making their decisions; but findings on ethnic identity and perceived voting intention of significant others may suggest otherwise.

Assessing the Extent of Democratic Failures: A 99%-Condorcet 's Jury Theorem

“…Ben-Yashar and Zahavi (2011) present a model of committee with rational uninformed voters and study whether adding an informed voters improve the performance of the committee. However, both theoretical and empirical literature suggest that we should also consider situations where at least some agents base their votes on mistaken information (see Mandler 2012;Hayes et al 2015;Lee et al 2016). Thus, we generalize Ben-Yashar and Zahavi (2011) model in order to consider this case and study its asymptotical implications.…”

Are We Rational or Not? The Exploration of Voter Choices during the 2016 Presidential and Legislative Elections in Taiwan

“…We achieve this goal by estimating a model that compares variance explained by the paths meeting the two criteria with paths that do not. The current model is refined from previous research in evaluating the rationality of Taiwanese voters (Lee et al, 2016 ), which focused on three sets of predictors: political party preference, ethnic identification , and the voting intention of significant others . Research has identified political partisanship as one of the most robust factors in predicting voter intention and choices (e.g., Bartels, 2000 ; Hillygus and Jackman, 2003 ), both in Taiwan (Achen and Wang, 2017 ) and in other democratic societies (e.g., the U.S.; see Bartels, 2000 ).…”

“…The previous study, which focused on the 2014 Taipei mayoral elections, found Taiwanese voters to be largely rational (Lee et al, 2016 ). The stated party preference (i.e., explicit party preference) and an interaction between explicit and implicit party preference (i.e., subconscious, more intuitive feelings toward one party) predicted voters' intention and, in turn, their voting choices.…”

“…However, there is evidence suggesting that voters can sometimes be irrational as well (Lee et al, 2016 ). Ethnic identification and perceived voting intention of significant others did not predict voting intention, but did predict actual voting choices in a real election.…”

“…Although the previous study examined several important aspects of voter rationality—voter preference, intention, and choices—one crucial factor was not examined: voters' evaluation of specific candidates (Lee et al, 2016 ). Therefore, the present study focuses on whether voters compile information from different sources (e.g., political parties) to help them determine which candidate is more capable compared to the others.…”