Expectations in Mass Elections:

∗
Back to the Future?
Marc Guinjoan, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Pablo Simon,´ Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles
Sandra Bermudez,´ Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Ignacio Lago, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Objectives. This article examines whether voters look to the past or the future
when forming their perceptions of the parties’ chances of winning. Methods. We
use OLS regression models to analyze panel survey data from the districts
where the incumbent was defeated in the 2011 provincial election in Ontario
(Canada). Results. We find that voters’ expectations in the districts are mainly
affected by the results of the upcoming election and not by the outcome of the
previous election. We also find that expectations are influenced by the
phenomenon of wishful thinking. Conclusions. This study sheds light on how
voters form their perceptions of the parties’ chances of winning.

Expectations are crucial for voters in mass elections. The bandwagon and
underdog effects or strategic voting are not possible if voters do not have
accurate expectations about election outcomes or, more specifically, if they are
not able to distinguish between winners and losers before the election. As Cox
(1997:7) argues, “the key to the process by which voter demands are anticipated
and fulfilled is the system of expectations. Clearly known common expectations
about who is and is not viable are self-fulfilling, and allow a considerable
decentralization of planning and vote-productive activities.”
In the last years a substantial body of literature has devoted significant at-
tention to how electoral expectations should be measured in different types

∗
Direct correspondence to Marc Guinjoan, Department of Political and Social Sci-ences,
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas 25–27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain
marc.guinjoan@upf.edu . Marc Guinjoan will share all data and coding for the purposes of
replication. This study is part of the Making Electoral Democracy Work project, see Blais (2010)
and http://electoraldemocracy.com. The authors acknowledge financial support from the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, research project 412-2009-1004, and the
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, research project CSO2010–1639. Preliminary versions
of this article were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association,
Chicago, April 2013, at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Victoria,
June 2013, and at the Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association,
Barcelona, June 2013. The authors are grateful to Christine Arnold, Andre´ Blais, Orit Kedar,
Guillem Riambau, Kelly Rowe, Laura Stephenson, Emilie Van Haute, and three anonymous
reviewers for comments on earlier versions.

SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 95, Number 5, December 2014

C 2013 by the Southwestern Social Science Association DOI:
10.1111/ssqu.12066
Expectations in Mass Elections: Back to the Future 1347
of electoral systems (Blais et al., 2008), what affects these expectations (Bar-
tels, 2002; Blais and Bodet, 2006; Blais and Turgeon, 2004; Meffert and
Gschwend, 2010), and how expectations might influence voting behavior
(Armstrong and Duch, 2010; Meffert et al., 2011). However, a crucial ques-tion,
whether voters primarily look to the past or the future when forming their
perceptions of the parties’ chances of winning, has not been systematically
evaluated. According to the rational expectation assumption (Cox, 1997:Ch. 4),
voters update their choices in light of incoming information about the
probability of outcomes in a Bayesian fashion. However, recent research has
shown that voters are “incomplete Bayesian” as bounded rationality states
(Jones, 1999:307). They employ the electoral history heuristics (i.e., whether
their preferred party in the previous election achieved representation or not) to
form their electoral expectations in the current election (Blais and Bodet, 2006;
Gschwend, 2007; Lago, 2008, Van der Straeten et al., 2010). This is what Van
der Straeten et al. (2010:445) call the “myopic” assumption and we call the
adaptive expectation.
To the best of our knowledge, there has been no systematic comparison with
observational data of the use of rational or adaptive expectations in mass
elections. This article tries to fill this gap. As the number and type of parties and
candidates that voters are willing to vote for depends partly on the basis of their
chance of winning a seat or the presidency, then strategic coordination models
would be differently modeled if they assume rational or adaptive expectations.
For instance, given that the informational requirements for voting strategically
are less demanding if voters simply look to the past to anticipate election
outcomes, strategic voting would be also possible in large districts when rational
expectations (Cox, 1997; Cox and Shugart, 1996) are replaced with adaptive
expectations (Forsythe et al., 1993; Lago, 2008).
In order to test whether voters look to the past or to the future when
forming their perceptions of the parties’ chances of winning, we make use of
a panel survey to estimate the congruence between voters’ expectations in
the 2011 provincial (regional) election in Ontario (Canada) and the results of
the previous (2007) and current elections. If voters’ expectations in 2011 are
more congruent with the results of the previous election than with the results
of the current one, then adaptive expectations are more important than
rational expectations, and the other way around. The analysis is focused on
those districts in which the winner of the seat is not the same in the two
elections in order to have “conflicting” expectation scenarios. Finally, we
explore whether the use of information about the previous elections or the
upcoming one depends on individual characteristics and the impact of the
phenomenon of “wishful thinking” on electoral expectations.
Our findings show that voters’ expectations in the districts are more
affected by the results of the upcoming election than by the outcome of
the previous election. We also find that expectations are influenced by
the phenomenon of wishful thinking.
1348 Social Science Quarterly

The article is organized as follows. In the next section, the previous

literature and arguments on how electoral preferences are formed are
discussed. The third section describes our case study, data, and methods.
The fourth section discusses the results of the empirical analysis. The fifth
section presents our conclusions and suggestions for further research.

Arguments

When explaining strategic behaviors (i.e., actions taken because of their

perceived impact on the final outcome), beliefs about other individuals’ be-
havior are crucial. If actors cannot anticipate future outcomes, they only face
incentives to behave sincerely. In electoral coordination models, rational ex-
pectations are the common assumption. According to Cox (1997:Chs. 4, 5),
when voters have rational expectations, (1) they agree on how preferences
are distributed in the electorate, (2) they agree on what share of the vote
each party or candidate will likely get and, therefore, (3) they are able to
distinguish between the expected winners and losers at the national and
district levels. Given that the main force generating this common knowledge
of candidate chances is polls, one of the five major categories of heuristics
distinguished by Lau and Redlawsk (2001:953–54), rational expectations are
mainly a function of heuristics. Van der Straeten et al. (2010:445) explained
that although the rational expectation amounts to postulating that voters
know something that has not taken place, it is theoretically attractive
because it avoids the difficult question of the belief-formation process.
However, as “cognitive misers” (Fiske and Taylor, 1991), it is hardly
arguable that rationally ignorant voters exert the effort to determine who is
ahead in their district, particularly in multimember districts. Instead of rational
expectations, it has been argued that there is an alternative process by which
voters derive expectations based on a simpler heuristic. Given that they have too
small at stake in elections to collect information, voters may, however, muddle
through relying on a shortcut such as the electoral history heuristic (i.e.,
expectations about the likely outcome of the election are grounded in simple
extrapolations from the previous one). Voters can solve coordination problems
posed by electoral systems through the identification of a focal point (Schelling,
1960:Ch. 3). The idea of a focal point is the most prevalent solution to
coordination problems (Richards, 2001). Schelling surmised that coordination
could occur if there was some shared interpretation of the salient features of a
decision context. People can often concert their intentions or expectations with
others if each knows that the other is trying to do the same.
Elections provide a very simple clue for coordinating behavior: whether
parties have previously gained at least one seat in a given district. Consequently,
in order to form their electoral expectations and vote strategically, voters only
have to look back to previous elections to determine who the strong parties or
candidates are (Blais and Bodet, 2006; Forsythe et al., 1993; Gschwend,
Expectations in Mass Elections: Back to the Future 1349
2004; Lago, 2008; Laslier, 2009). This formation of expectations is
closely linked to the idea of bounded rationality (Jones, 1999).
Whether voters have primarily rational or adaptive expectations is key for
electoral coordination models. Roughly speaking, the informational require-
ments for strategic coordination are more demanding in the former than in the
latter and this has implications for the timing, intensity, and even the existence
of strategic behaviors. First, when assuming rational expectations, the strategic
behavior of party elites and voters is supposedly not possible in the first
elections and then increases with time once both parties and votes are informed
about which parties or candidates are most likely to obtain represen-tation. This
is what has been defined as the tabula rasa perspective, “an image of
institutional experimentation that echoes the chaotic environment of the
transition [and then] stresses the newness of the democratic experience and the
propensity to form weak and fluid party configurations” (Bielasiak, 2002:192,
189). In other words, the tabula rasa perspective stresses the newness of the
democratic experience and the propensity to behave nonstrategically. How-ever,
if voters simply look to the past to anticipate election outcomes, strategic
coordination is possible in the second election although polls (at the national
and district levels) were not available and even in the founding election in those
countries with a previous electoral experience before the current demo-cratic
period (Lago and Mart´ınez, 2012). Accordingly, the speed at which the long-
term equilibrium relationship between party system size at the electoral and
legislative levels (Best, 2010) is reached will differ depending on the type of
expectations.
Second, the predominant argument in electoral coordination models as-
suming rational expectation is that strategic voting should decline as voters’
expectations about which party or candidate will win or lose are less clear
and coordinated. The larger the district magnitude or the smaller the voter
percentages that separate winners from losers, the harder it is to be sure
which party or candidate is “out of the running.” In these conditions, there
are no clear incentives to desert (minor) parties or candidates. As a result, in
PR systems with large district magnitudes, strategic voting should not be an
empirically relevant phenomenon. According to empirical regularities based
on Japanese, Colombian, and Spanish district-level results, strategic voting
fades out when district magnitude is greater than five seats because it gets
too difficult to satisfy informational requirements (Cox, 1997:Ch. 5; Cox
and Shugart, 1996). However, if voters look back to previous elections to
form their electoral expectations, when their most preferred party did not
achieve representation in their district in the previous election, there is an
opportu-nity for strategic voting in the upcoming election (Blais and Bodet,
2006; Forsythe et al., 1993; Gschwend, 2004, 2007; Lago, 2008; Laslier,
2009). The most important consequence of this logic of electoral
coordination is that the opportunity for strategic voting does not depend on
district magnitude: voters can also behave strategically in large districts
since the information on previous election results is also available there.
1350 Social Science Quarterly

Finally, the formation of expectations about the identity of trailing and

front-running parties or candidates is particularly sensitive to wishful
think-ing. As is well known, voters with strong partisan preferences tend
to over-estimate the chances of preferred parties and/or underestimate
the chances of disliked parties or candidates (Mutz, 1998:Ch. 6). When
the support of a party or candidate increases, so does the amount of
wishful think-ing in favor of this party or candidate. This means that
voters will at-tribute higher chances of winning to their party, even if
ignoring the polls.
Partisan preferences, in particular party identification, have a significant
impact on voters’ perceptions of the parties’ chances of winning: those who
identify with a party credit that party better chances than those with no
partisan predisposition (Blais and Bodet, 2006). But partisans are not less
sensitive to the available contextual information about the strength or
weakness of the parties. Indeed, in a recent piece, Meffert et al. (2011)
clarify that partisan preferences have two distinct effects on perceptions.
While partisans overestimate the chances of “their” party winning through
wishful thinking, partisan preferences also have a positive effect on the
overall accuracy of voters’ expectations due to stronger political
involvement and higher levels of political awareness.
Hence, any inference that aims at explaining how voters form their
expec-tations on parties’ upcoming chances of winning will have to
control both for wishful thinking and the level of political awareness.
Only after controlling for these two likely distorting factors, will it be
possible to determine whether expectations on parties’ chances of
winning are mainly formed retrospectively or prospectively.

Data and Methods

In considering how electoral expectations are formed, our analytical strat-

egy is to look at the congruence between voters’ perceptions of the parties’
chances of winning at the district level in the upcoming election and the par-
ties’ results in the previous and upcoming elections. If electoral expectations
are more highly correlated with the previous electoral results than with the
upcoming electoral results, then adaptive expectations beat rational expecta-
tions, and the other way around. The analysis is focused on those districts in
which the incumbent was defeated in order to have conflicting electoral
expectations when voters look to the past or to the future. If the incumbent is
reelected (i.e., when electoral results are virtually the same in two
consecutive elections), expectations about parties ’ chances can be congruent
with both the previous and the upcoming elections and so it is not possible to
determine if expectations are mainly rational or adaptive. Additionally, when
using data at the district level from a single election, national factors are
perfectly controlled and statistical inference is more robust.
Expectations in Mass Elections: Back to the Future 1351
We study the 2011 regional (provincial) election in Ontario (Canada) for
several methodological and substantive reasons. On the one hand, the Internet
panel survey conducted by the Making Electoral Democracy Work project is
1
particularly well suited to examine how voters’ expectations are formed. The
Ontario election was held on October 6, 2011, while the preelection survey was
conducted between September 25 and October 5, 2011, and the postelection
survey between October 7, 2011 and October 20, 2011. A representative sample
of 1,309 people was interviewed online. The questionnaire includes in the
preelection survey a question tapping respondents’ perceptions of the various
parties’ chances of winning the seat in the respondent’s district, and vote choice
and political awareness in the postelection survey.
On the other hand, the 107 single-member, simple-plurality districts in
Ontario elections allow us to have a substantial number of districts (and
respondents in the survey) in which the incumbent changed between the 2007
and the 2011 elections. In 18 of the 107 single-member constituencies districts
in which Ontario is divided, the incumbent was defeated. In all of these 18
districts, the incumbents were the Liberals; in 11 districts, the Conservatives
won the seat; and in 7, the New Democratic Party (NDP) In these 18 districts,
129 voters (the 9.85 percent of the sample) were interviewed. Our research
design is based on comparison of those districts where the Liberals won in the
two elections with those districts where the Liberals won in 2007 but lost in
2011. If voters primarily look to the past, voters’ perceptions of the Liberals’
chances of winning in their district would be the same in the two scenarios; if
they primarily look to the future, we should expect that the Liberals’ chances of
winning were better in those districts where they won in 2011 than in those
where they lost. For the Conservatives and the NDP the logic is the same, but
comparing those districts where they lost in both elections with those districts
2
where they lost in 2007 and won in 2011.
Finally, district-level electoral expectations might simply reflect perceptions
of the parties’ chances of winning the election in the country as a whole. Given
that the Liberals won both the 2007 and 2011 elections in Ontario, this coat-tail
effect when forming local electoral expectations is largely constant. The results
of the 2007 and 2011 Ontario elections are displayed in Table 1.
The dependent variables are voters’ perceptions of the three largest
parties’ chances of winning in their district; Liberals, Conservatives, and
NDP, on a scale from 0 (no chance at all) to 10 (certain to win).
Our key independent variable is district-level situations creating conflicting
electoral expectations. It has been operationalized as follows: for the Liberals,
the value 0 corresponds to those districts where the party won both in the

1 http://electoraldemocracy.com .
2 Those districts where the Liberals lost in 2007 and the Conservatives and the NDP won
in 2007 have been excluded. The reason is that there are no districts where the Liberals lost in 2007
and won in 2011 and the Conservatives or the NDP won in 2007 and lost in 2011. Therefore, the
comparison we are doing above but controlling for the 2007 situation is not possible.
1352 Social Science Quarterly
TABLE 1
2007 and 2011 Legislative Assembly of Ontario Election Results

Percentage of Votes Number of Seats

2007 2011 Difference 2007 2011 Difference
Liberals 43.3 37.6 −5.7 71 53 −18
Conservatives 31.6 35.4 +3.8 26 37 +11
NDP 16.8 22.7 +5.9 10 17 +7
Others 8.3 4.3 −4.0 0 0 0
SOURCE: http://www.elections.on.ca/en-CA/ .

TABLE 2
District Scenarios in the 2007 and 2011 Elections in Ontario

Party Value 2007 2011 Individuals in the Survey

Liberals 0 Win Win 580
1 Win Lose 129
Conservatives 0 Lose Lose 851
1 Lose Win 68
NDP 0 Lose Lose 1,004
1 Lose Win 62

2007 and the 2011 elections and the value 1 to those districts where the party
won in 2007 but lost in 2011. Similarly, for the Conservatives and the NDP the
value 0 corresponds to those districts where the party lost in the 2007 and the
2011 elections and the value 1 to those districts where the party lost in 2007 but
won in 2011. If expectations are primarily adaptive, the chances of parties
winning would be similar in the two types of districts. However, if expectations
are primarily rational, the Liberals’ chances of winning would be lower in 0
than in 1, while the Conservatives’ and the NDP’s chances would be higher in 1
than in 0. The district scenarios are displayed in Table 2.
To test whether voters primarily look to the past or the future when forming
expectations or, more specifically, if there are differences in the chances of
winning of various parties across the district scenarios, we will perform a paired
mean comparison test. However, as electoral expectations are affected by
wishful thinking and individuals’ level of political awareness, a regression will
be also run to show the robustness of our results. Apart from the dummy
variable capturing district-level scenarios, three control variables will be added
to the model: (i) a political awareness scale going from 0 (no information at all)
3
to 3 (maximum level of information), (ii) a categorical variable, party
identification, for those who identify with the Liberals, the Conservatives, or

3Those respondents who were familiar with three slogans from the campaign were asked to attribute the slogan to the corresponding party, Liberals,

Conservatives, or the NDP.

Expectations in Mass Elections: Back to the Future 1353
TABLE 3
Summary Statistics of Individual-Level Variables

Variable N Mean SD Min. Max.

Chances – Liberals 1,172 5.72 2.57 0 10
Chances – Conservatives 1,168 5.71 2.68 0 10
Chances – NDP 1,176 3.88 2.79 0 10
Political awareness 1,309 0.70 0.98 0 3
Perceptions of closeness 1,146 0.68 0.46 0 1
Party identification 1,222 0.68 1.02 0 3

4
the NDP or do not identify with any party, and (iii) voters’ perceptions of the
closeness of district races (which equals 0 when voters expected that the
outcome of the election would be not very close or not close at all and 1 when
5
they expected a very close or somewhat close outcome). The reason for
controlling for closeness is that the predominance of rational expectations over
adaptive expectations might be explained by campaigning. The districts in
which the winning party changes probably had a more intense and salient
campaign (e.g., more media coverage or even more polls), which in turn might
explain that voters responded more to the upcoming election results. The
descriptive statistics are displayed in Table 3.
Thus, we will run the following models:
Liberals’ chances of winning = β 0 + β 1 Defeat Liberals + β 2 Political awareness
+ β 3 Perceptions of the closeness of district races + β 4 Party identification + μ
Conservatives’ chances of winning = β 0 + β 1 Victory Conservatives + β 2
Political awareness + β 3 Perceptions of the closeness of district races +
β 4 Party identification + μ
NDP’s chances of winning = β 0 + β 1 Victory NDP + β 2 Political awareness + β
3 Perceptions of the closeness of district races + β 4 Party identification +
μ.
Additionally, we have run an interactive model for each party in which an
interaction (between political awareness and defeat/victory) is added to the
additive specification. The impact of information on the perceived chances
of winning of a given party will have a different sign depending on the
objective chances of the party. For instance, highly informed votes will give
lower chances to the Liberals than to the Conservatives/NDP in the districts

4 The specific question in the survey is the following: “Do you usually think of yourself as
close to any particular political party in Ontario?” If the answer is positive, “Which party do you
feel closest to?”
The specific question in the survey is the following: “Do you expect the outcome of the election in your own
5
local district to be: very close, somewhat close, not very close or not close at all?”
1354 Social Science Quarterly
TABLE 4

Mean Comparison Tests of the Chances of Winninga

Comparisons

Liberal Liberal
(winner 2007-winner 2011) (winner 2007-loser 2011) Difference
∗
6.63 5.30 1.32
(0.09) (0.22) (0.08)
580 129 709
Conservative Conservative
(loser 2007-loser 2011) (loser 2007-winner 2011) Difference
∗
5.02 6.32 −1.30
(0.08) (0.28) (0.08)
851 68 919
NDP NDP
(loser 2007-loser 2011) (loser 2007-winner 2011) Difference
3.35 5.52 −2.16∗
(0.07) (0.32) (0.07)
1,004 62 1,066
∗
p < 0.001.
a In each cell, the first figure is the mean of the party’s chances of winning; the standard errors are in
parentheses and the number of observations is below the standard errors.

in which the Liberals lost, but higher in the districts in which the
Liberals won both in 2007 and 2011.
Finally, although the structure of the data is clearly hierarchical, we have
decided not to run a multilevel model. According to the oft-cited rule of
thumb, doing a multilevel analysis requires at least 20 groups and 30 obser-
vations per group (Heck and Thomas, 2000). Alternative recommendations
are 30 groups and 30 observations per group (Hox, 2002) or 50 groups and
30 observations per group (Mass and Hox, 2004). Only in three of our 107
districts are there more than 20 respondents. Accordingly, the estimation is
by ordinary least squares (OLS). All standard errors are clustered by
electoral district to account for the nonindependence in the data structure.

Results

In Table 4 we present initial evidence that bears on the discussion sketched

out in the previous section. We have performed a paired test to show whether
the differences in the local chances of winning of various parties in those
districts in which looking to the past or to the future generates conflicting
expectations are statistically significant. First, the Liberals’ perceived chances
of winning in the districts where the party won in 2007 but lost in 2011 are
substantially lower (5.30) than in the districts where the party won in the two
Expectations in Mass Elections: Back to the Future 1355
TABLE 5
The Influence of Previous and Upcoming Electoral Results on
Electoral Expectations
Liberal Conservative NDP Liberal Conservative NDP

Political awareness ∗∗ − 0.005 − 0.001 ∗∗∗ − 0.1 − 0.21

0.35 0.39
∗

(0.10) (0.09) (0.09) (0.10) (0.11) (0.09)

∗∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗∗ ∗∗
Perceptions of −0.58 1.44 0.47 −0.57 1.44 0.46
closeness (0.34) (0.29) (0.22) (0.38) (0.29) (0.22)
Party identification
− − − − − −
∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗
No identification 0.99 0.83 1.40 0.99 0.82 1.40
(0.30) (0.31) (0.36) (0.30) − 0.30 (0.40)
Liberals − 0.99∗∗ − 2.29∗∗∗ [Ref.] 0.98
∗∗ − 2.28∗∗∗
Conservatives − ∗∗ (0.40) (0.42) − (0.41) (0.41)
1.33 − 2.63∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ − 2.35∗∗∗
[Ref.] 1.31 [Ref.]
∗

(0.34) − (0.41) (0.34) − (0.41)

NDP − 0.58 1.24
∗∗∗
[Ref.] − 0.57 1.23
∗∗∗
[Ref.]
Swing districts (0.34) (0.45) (0.38) (0.46)
− −
∗∗∗ ∗∗∗
Liberal defeat 1.20 1.06
Conservative victory (0.32) ∗∗∗ (0.40) ∗∗∗
1.34 1.26
NDP victory (0.29) ∗∗∗ (0.28) ∗
1.49 1.45
∗∗

∗ (0.36) −0.17 (0.30)

Awareness Liberal defeat
∗ (0.25) 0.08
Awareness Conservative victory
∗ (0.21) 0.06
Awareness NDP
victory
Constant ∗∗ (0.30)
7.69 ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗
4.63 4.72 7.65 4.64 4.71
∗

(0.31) (0.42) (0.37) (0.44) (0.42) (0.47)

N 631 725 852 631 725 852
No. of clusters 72 81 98 72 81 98
R
2 0.09 0.11 0.1 0.1 0.11 0.11

Estimation is by OLS. Standard errors in parentheses.

∗ ∗∗ ∗∗∗
p < 0.05, p < 0.01, p < 0.001.

elections (6.63). The difference is statistically significant at the 0.001

level. This means that rational expectations beat adaptive expectations.
The results for Conservatives and NDP follow the same pattern. For both
parties, their perceived chances of winning are much better in the
districts where they lost in 2007 but won in 2011 than in the districts
where they lost in the two elections. The differences (1.30 for
Conservatives and 2.16 for NDP) are also statistically significant at the
0.001 level. In total, voters look to the future much more than to the past
when forming their perceptions of the parties’ chances of winning.
To explore the robustness of our findings, in our regression models we
control for political awareness, voters’ perceptions of the closeness of district
races, and party identification. The results are displayed in Table 5. In the first
model the Liberals’ local chances of winning are the dependent variables. The
results strongly support that rational expectations are more important
1356 Social Science Quarterly

than adaptive expectations. In those districts where the Liberals won in 2007
but lost in 2011, their perceived chances of winning in 2011 are 1.20 points
lower than in those districts were they won in the two elections. The
variable is statistically significant at the 0.001 level. There is also evidence
in favor of wishful thinking. Respondents identified with the Conservatives
or without party identification give the Liberals a score that is 1.33 and 0.99
points, respectively, lower than individuals who think of themselves as
Liberals. The two categories are statistically significant at the 0.001 level.
However, there are no statistically significant differences between Liberals
and NDP identifiers. Political awareness also influences the chances of
winning. The more politically aware a person is, the higher the chances s/he
attributes to the Liberals. The variable is also statistically significant at the
0.001 level. Finally, voters’ perceptions on the closeness of district races do
not have a significant impact on perception of the Liberals’ local chances.
The second model, in which the Liberals are replaced with the Conserva-
tives, also shows that voters look to the future when forming their electoral
expectations. In those districts where the Conservatives lost in 2007 but won
in 2011, their perceived chances of winning in 2011 are 1.34 points higher
than in those districts where they lost in the two elections. The variable is
statistically significant at the 0.001 level. All the party identification
categories are statistically significant at the 0.05 level or better:
Conservative identifiers credit the party better chances than the rest of the
individuals. In contrast with the previous model, political awareness is
negative but is not statistically significant. In other words, the impact of
political sophistication is far from being robust. Finally, voters who expect a
close outcome in their district give the Conservatives a score that is 1.44
higher than voters who think that the outcome will be not close.
In the third model, the results for the NDP are displayed. The same
pattern emerges with respect to the crucial role of rational expectations. In
those districts where the NDP lost in 2007 but won in 2011, its perceived
chances of winning in 2011 are 1.49 points higher than in those districts
where the party lost in the two elections. The variable is again statistically
significant at the 0.001 level. In this model all the party identification
categories are statistically significant at the 0.001 level. Respondents who
identified with the NDP give the party higher scores than the rest of
respondents. It should be noted that party identification has the strongest
impact among NDP supporters as the coefficients are larger than in the case
of the Liberal and the Conservative supporters in previous models. This is
clearly in line with Blais and Bodet’s (2006:486) findings. Similarly,
political awareness has a negative sign and does not have a significant
impact on expectations. As in the case of the Conservatives, those who
expect a close outcome in their district credit the NDP with more points
(0.47) than those who think that the outcome will be not close.
Finally, we have tested whether there is an interaction effect between
political awareness and the district scenarios. The argument is that
sophisticated voters
Expectations in Mass Elections: Back to the Future 1357
TABLE 6
Simulating the Impact of District Structure on Electoral Expectations

Perceived Local Chances of Winning

Liberal Liberal
(winner 2007-winner 2011) (winner 2007-loser 2011) Difference
6.55 5.35 1.20
Conservative Conservative
(loser 2007-loser 2011) (loser 2007-winner 2011) Difference
4.77 6.11 −1.34
NDP NDP
(loser 2007-loser 2011) (loser 2007-winner 2011) Difference
3.63 5.12 −1.49

should pay more attention to exogenous information and particularly in

swing districts. All the interactions are of the expected sign (negative for
the Liberals and positive for the Conservative and the NDP) but not
significant. The remaining coefficients do not change appreciably.
Based on the results of the additive models in Table 5, Table 6 simulates
the local chances of winning of the three parties for the different district
scenarios once political awareness, voters’ perceptions of the closeness of
district races, and party identification are set at their mean and mode values.
The NDP shows the highest gap and the Conservatives the lowest. Clearly,
rational expectations beat adaptive expectations.

Conclusions

Voters can form their expectations about parties’ chances of winning on the
basis of both the previous election results and the results of the upcoming
election. Determining whether voters have adaptive or rational expectations is a
very relevant discussion for modeling strategic coordination in mass elec-tions.
In this article, we have used observational data from the 2011 Ontario provincial
election to determine which of these two possible sources of infor-mation, the
past or the future, is the most important one when voters come to think that
some parties are more likely to win than others. Our empirical analysis is
focused on those districts in which the incumbent was defeated in the election in
order to have conflicting electoral expectations depending on whether voters
look to the past or to the future.
We have found both in the mean comparison tests and the regression analy-
sis strong evidence in favor of rational expectations: voters’ perceptions of the
various parties’ chances of winning are mainly affected by the results of the
upcoming election and not by the outcome of the previous election. Thus,
1358 Social Science Quarterly

rational expectations beat adaptive expectations. Additionally, the existence

of wishful thinking when forming electoral expectations is strongly
supported by our results. Those who identify with a party credit that party
better chances than those with no partisan predisposition or with a different
party identifi-cation. This effect is larger for NDP partisans. However, we
have not found a robust effect of political awareness on voters’ expectations.
Finally, our analysis of how voters form their expectations about the parties’
chances of winning opens up two important research questions. First, once
shown that the rational expectations approach does better than the adaptive
view, we have to understand under what conditions people are either more
rational or more adaptive in forming their expectations. Second, we have
examined how voters behave in single-member, simple-plurality districts where
it is relatively easy most of the time to predict who will win and who will lose.
However, as district magnitude increases (i.e., in proportional representation
electoral systems), the smaller the voter percentages that separate winners from
losers are, the harder it is to be sure who is “out of the running.” Under
conditions of high uncertainty about the identity of trailing and front-running
parties or candidates, it can be hypothesized that the outcome of the previous
election might play a more important role when it comes to ascertaining chances
of winning. In total, the correlation between rational (adaptive) expectations and
district magnitude might be negative (positive).

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