Partisan bias and expressive voting

Andrea Robbett and Peter Matthews

Journal of Public Economics, 2018, vol. 157, issue C, 107-120

Abstract: We conduct an experiment to characterize the “expressive” voting behavior of political partisans. We find that participants who are asked to vote on the answer to factual questions tend to offer more partisan responses than those who must answer as decisive individuals. We further test whether voters exploit corrective information that sometimes challenges their partisan views. When information is available, we observe smaller partisan gaps and more correct responses, especially when the information is free. When information is costly to acquire, we find that voters generally choose to remain uninformed, consistent with the Downsian theory of rational ignorance.

Keywords: Experiment; Voting behavior; Expressive voting; Information aggregation; Rational ignorance; Rational irrationality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D72 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:157:y:2018:i:c:p:107-120

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.09.008

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