THE MARGINAL VOTER'S CURSE

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Herrera, Helios; Llorente-Saguer, Aniol; McMurray, Joseph C.
• 署名单位: University of Warwick; University of Warwick; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); University of London; Queen Mary University London; Brigham Young University
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1093/ej/uez038
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 3137-3153
• 关键词: information-aggregation; Scoring rules; ELECTIONS; turnout; MODEL

摘要

The swing voter's curse is useful for explaining patterns of voter participation, but arises because voters restrict attention to the rare event of a pivotal vote. Recent empirical evidence suggests that electoral margins influence policy outcomes, even away from the 50% threshold. If so, voters should also pay attention to the marginal impact of a vote. Adopting this assumption, we find that a marginal voter's curse gives voters a new reason to abstain: to avoid diluting the pool of information. The two curses have similar origins and exhibit similar patterns, but the marginal voter's curse is both stronger and more robust. In fact, the swing voter's curse turns out to be on a knife edge: in large elections, a model with both pivotal and marginal considerations and a model with marginal considerations alone generate identical equilibrium behaviour.