Article

Strategic, Sincere and Heuristic Voting under Four Election Rules: An Experimental Study

André Blais, Jean-François Laslier, Nicolas Sauger, and Karine Van Der Straeten

Abstract

We report on laboratory experiments on voting. In a setting where subjects have single-peaked preferences, we find that the rational choice theory provides very good predictions of actual individual behavior in one-round and approval voting elections but fares poorly in explaining vote choice under two-round elections. We conclude that voters behave strategically as far as strategic computations are not too demanding, in which case they rely on simple heuristics (under two-round voting) or they just vote sincerely (under single transferable vote).

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Published in

Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 35, n. 3, March 2010, pp. 435–472