LT WEEK L1.

1 Inferring Strategic Voting

Kawai and Watanabe (2013)
Motivation Understanding how voters choose is key to understanding electoral outcomes
Study Background 2005 legislative elections in Japan → 480 representatives elected, one per district
Focus on 159 districts that satisfy the following :
• Elect representative with first-past-the-post (FPTP) rule
• Have 3 or 4 candidates running that are part of a subset of the 4 major parties
• District has at least 2 municipalities
• No missing data
Theory Voting Models
Expressive Voting → Vote for preferred party
• Voter i has to choose among K parties or candidates
• Derives utility 𝑢𝑖𝑘 from candidate k being elected
• i’s vote is determined by max 𝑘 𝜖 𝐾 𝑓(𝑢𝑖𝑘 , 𝑝𝑘 )
Strategic Voting → Voting decision takes into account pivotality
• Voter i holds prior beliefs over each parties’ chance at winning, 𝑝𝑘
• i’s vote is determined by max 𝑘 𝜖 𝐾 𝑓(𝑢𝑖𝑘 , 𝑝𝑘 )
or
• Voter i holds prior beliefs over when her vote will be pivotal, µ
• Vote for candidate that yields higher utility weighted
by the scenarios where the voter is pivotal
Literature
• Voters consistently overestimate their likelihood of being pivotal
→ experience increases the voters’ accuracy
• 30% to 50% of voters act strategically
• Older and richer voters vote more strategically
Identification • Model where there are strategic and sincere voters
• Voters hold beliefs about when their vote could be pivotal
• Combine with data on legislative elections in Japan
• Exploit variation within electoral district to estimate % of strategic and sincere voters
Identification
• We do not observe the distribution of preferences or voters’ beliefs
• Identification by exploiting cross-municipality variation within district
Example
• Three candidates → cA (liberal), cB (moderate) and cC (conservative)
• Two districts → D1 mostly conservative and D2 mostly liberal
• Take a municipality from each district → 𝑚11 (liberal) and 𝑚12 (liberal)
• If there are no strategic voters ⇒ Similar vote shares in 𝑚11 and 𝑚12
• If there are strategic voters ⇒ More votes for moderate candidate in 𝑚11
Empirical Design Model
• K ≥ 3 candidates
• M municipalities with an electoral district
• Finite number of voters ∑𝑀 𝑚=1 𝑁𝑚 < ∞
Voter n derives utility 𝑈𝑛𝑘 from candidate k being elected : 𝑈𝑛𝑘 = 𝑢(𝒙𝑛 , 𝒛𝑘 ) + 𝜉𝑘𝑚 + 𝜀𝑛𝑘
• 𝒙𝑛 → set of voter characteristics
• 𝒛𝑘 → set of candidate characteristics
• 𝜉𝑘𝑚 → candidate-municipality shock
• 𝜀𝑛𝑘 → independent and identically distributed random variables (iid) shock
Voters
Sincere voters → vote for k if and only if 𝑈𝑛𝑘 > 𝑈𝑛𝑙
Strategic voters → chooses vote considering only the events in which she is pivotal
• 𝑻𝑛 = {𝑇𝑛,𝑘𝑙 }𝑘𝑙 are voter n’s beliefs that there will be a tie or one candidate
will be only 1 vote behind the other between any two candidates
• Expected utility from voting for candidate k is
• 𝑈 ̅𝑛𝑘 (𝑻𝑛 ) = 1 ∑𝑙 𝜖 {1,…,𝐾} 𝑇𝑛,𝑘𝑙 (𝑈𝑛𝑘 − 𝑈𝑛𝑙 )
2
• Vote for k if and only if 𝑈 ̅𝑛𝑘 (𝑻𝑛 ) ≥ 𝑈 ̅𝑛𝑙 (𝑻𝑛 )
𝛼𝑚 probability of voter n being strategic in municipal m
1 − 𝛼𝑚 probability of voter n being sincere in municipal m
Assumptions
• Beliefs are common to all voters within an electoral district
• A voter is more likely to be pivotal with parties that have a higher vote share
• Voters of both types always vote for the candidate
that maximizes their utility and not someone else
Estimation
• Assume the following functional form for the voter’s utility
𝑈𝑛𝑚𝑘 = −∥ 𝜃 𝐼𝐷 𝒙𝑛 − 𝜃 𝑃𝑂𝑆 𝒛𝑃𝑂𝑆 𝑘 ∥ +𝜃 𝑄𝐿𝑇𝑌 𝒛𝑄𝐿𝑇𝑌
𝑘𝑚 + 𝜉𝑘𝑚 + 𝜀𝑛𝑘
𝒙𝑛 → years of education, income level & binary variable indicating if n is 65 or older
𝒛𝑃𝑂𝑆
𝑘 → candidate’s party and economic ideology
𝑄𝐿𝑇𝑌
𝒛𝑘𝑚 → candidate’s political experience and whether m is her hometown
𝜃 𝑃𝑂𝑆 → ideological position of the voter
𝜃 𝑄𝐿𝑇𝑌 → non-ideological component of the voter’s preferences
• Estimate preference parameters θ
• Construct counterfactuals when changing voter characteristics →
sincere voting under plurality rule
Data Voting data at the municipality level
Candidate characteristics from the Asahi-Todai Elite Survey (ATES)
Demographic characteristics at the municipality level
Electoral forecasts at the district level from 2 newspapers
Key Findings Very high share of strategic voters (compared to previous findings)
• Authors argue that is because previous papers only focused on misaligned voting
(strategic voters that do not vote for their preferred candidate)
Large proportion of strategic voters: 63.4% to 84.9%
Interpretation Results would change if all voters would vote sincerely and plurality rule adopted
However, this paper does not consider turnout