Voting as a Rational Choice

Aaron Edlin, Andrew Gelman and Noah Kaplan
Additional contact information
Aaron Edlin: Department of Economics and School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, USA, aedlin@econ.columbia.edu
Andrew Gelman: Department of Statistics and Department of Political Science, Columbia University, New York, USA, gelman@stat.columbia.edu
Noah Kaplan: Department of Political Science, University of Houston, Texas, USA, nkaplan@uh.edu

Rationality and Society, 2007, vol. 19, issue 3, 293-314

Abstract: For voters with `social' preferences, the expected utility of voting is approximately independent of the size of the electorate, suggesting that rational voter turnouts can be substantial even in large elections. Less important elections are predicted to have lower turnout, but a feedback mechanism keeps turnout at a reasonable level under a wide range of conditions. The main contributions of this paper are: (1) to show how, for an individual with both selfish and social preferences, the social preferences will dominate and make it rational for a typical person to vote even in large elections; (2) to show that rational socially motivated voting has a feedback mechanism that stabilizes turnout at reasonable levels (e.g., 50% of the electorate); (3) to link the rational social-utility model of voter turnout with survey findings on socially motivated vote choice .

Keywords: elections; turnout; sociotropic voting; rational choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (43)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:19:y:2007:i:3:p:293-314

DOI: 10.1177/1043463107077384

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