Voting with Preferences over Margins of Victory

Humberto Llavador

No 230, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: This paper analyzes a two-alternative voting model with the distinctive feature that voters have preferences over the support that each alternative receives, and not only over the identity of the winner. The main result of the paper is the existence of a unique equilibrium outcome with a very intuitive characterization: in equilibrium voters who prefer a higher support for one of the alternatives vote for such alternative. Its computation is equally simple: the equilibrium outcome is the unique fixed point of the connected survival function associated to the distribution of the electorate. This characterization works for electorates with a finite number of citizens as well as with a continuum of agents, and for scenarios with and without abstention. Finally, strategic voting (voting for the least preferred alternative) is common for a fraction of the electorate who favor electorally "balanced" results.

Keywords: voting; abstention; plurality; strategic voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://bw.bse.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/1230-file.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Voting with preferences over margins of victory (2008)
Working Paper: Voting with preferences over margins of victory (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:bge:wpaper:230

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bruno Guallar ().