I voted today because I enjoy voting (and because I happen to have a fairly strong preference.) The tiny chance of being pivotal surely doesn’t compensate me for the time, but I enjoy seeing the vote totals and knowing that I influenced the final digit. I have a feeling that many people are like me, or equivalently, vote out of a sense of duty. This is a bit of a problem for the game-theory models of voting where rational people weigh the probability of being pivotal and intensity of preference against the “cost” (presumably time) of voting. These models tend to predict a tiny turnout. Now, I don’t doubt that more people vote in close elections, so the likelihood of being pivotal has *some* impact on turnout. Intensity of preference probably matters more, though. I know political scientists debate the determining factors in turnout ad infinitum; I’m not trying to break new ground here, just sharing some thoughts and perhaps starting a discussion.
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3 comments
November 2, 2010 at 8:45 pm
afinetheorem
Lowered costs matter a lot for voting. For instance, states that allow vote-by-mail (like Oregon) have seen huge increases in propensity to vote. Clearly the pivotal vote models don’t work, but it’s not totally clear whether “sense of duty”, somehow defined, or other-regarding preferences explain the benefit side of voting better. I would lean toward sense of duty, the reason being that, just as a mathematical fact, the probability of being pivotal times the number of voters in a state grows slower than the number of voters in a state. So with other-regarding preferences, you would expect larger states to have much less voting that smaller states. There is something to this, but not much.
November 2, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Jonathan Weinstein
No question, costs matter…not everyone will or can stand in line for an hour. I guess this is why turnout is strong for retirees.
November 5, 2010 at 11:21 am
Itai Sher
The fact that close elections increase turnout does not establish that the probability of being pivotal figures in voter’s decisions. (This probability is still very small). The increased turnout could be explained by increased political advertising and media attention, and increased rescources devoted to getting out the vote.
I am sure that increasing the costs of voting deters it; however, I doubt that the chance of being pivotal figures prominently among its benefits.