Do Voters Vote Sincerely?

Arianna Degan and Antonio Merlo

No 12922, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In this paper we address the following question: To what extent is the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely testable or falsifiable? We show that using data only on how individuals vote in a single election, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is irrefutable, regardless of the number of candidates competing in the election. On the other hand, using data on how the same individuals vote in multiple elections, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is potentially falsifiable, and we provide general conditions under which the hypothesis can be tested. We then consider an application of our theoretical framework and assess whether the behavior of voters is consistent with sincere voting in U.S. national elections in the post-war period. We find that by and large sincere voting can explain virtually all of the individual-level observations on voting behavior in presidential and congressional U.S. elections in the data.

JEL-codes: C12 C63 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-soc
Note: POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12922.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Do Voters Vote Sincerely? (2007)
Working Paper: Do Voters Vote Sincerely? (2007)
Working Paper: Do Voters Vote Sincerely? (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12922

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12922

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().