The Performance of the Pivotal-Voter Model in Small-Scale Elections: Evidence from Texas Liquor Referenda

Stephen Coate, Michael Conlin (conlinmi@msu.edu) and Andrea Moro

No 10797, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: How well does the pivotal-voter model explain voter participation in small-scale elections? This paper explores this question using data from Texas liquor referenda. It first structurally estimates the parameters of a pivotal-voter model using the Texas data. It then uses the estimates to evaluate both the within and out-of-sample performance of the model. The analysis shows that the model is capable of predicting turnout in the data fairly well, but tends, on average, to predict closer electoral outcomes than are observed in the data. This difficulty allows the pivotal-voter model to be outperformed by a simple alternative model based on the idea of expressive voting.

JEL-codes: D7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Note: PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Published as Stephen Coate & Michael Conlin & Andrea Moro, 2008. "The performance of pivotal-voter models in small-scale elections: Evidence from Texas liquor referenda," Journal of Public Economics, vol 92(3-4), pages 582-596.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10797.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The performance of pivotal-voter models in small-scale elections: Evidence from Texas liquor referenda (2008)
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:10797

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10797

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 (wpc@nber.org).