Partisan bias and expressive voting

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Robbett, Andrea; Matthews, Peter Hans
• 署名单位: Middlebury College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.09.008
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 107-120
• 关键词: Experiment; Voting behavior; Expressive voting; information aggregation; Rational ignorance; Rational irrationality

摘要

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.