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  3. American Economic Review
  4. April 2013
  5. Inferring Strategic Voting

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Inferring Strategic Voting

  • Kei Kawai
  • Yasutora Watanabe
American Economic Review
vol. 103, no. 2, April 2013
(pp. 624–62)
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Abstract

We estimate a model of strategic voting and quantify the impact it has on election outcomes. Because the model exhibits multiplicity of outcomes, we adopt a set estimator. Using Japanese general-election data, we find a large fraction (63.4 percent, 84.9 percent) of strategic voters, only a small fraction (1.4 percent, 4.2 percent) of whom voted for a candidate other than the one they most preferred (misaligned voting). Existing empirical literature has not distinguished between the two, estimating misaligned voting instead of strategic voting. Accordingly, while our estimate of strategic voting is high, our estimate of misaligned voting is comparable to previous studies. (JEL D72)

Citation

Kawai, Kei, and Yasutora Watanabe. 2013. "Inferring Strategic Voting." American Economic Review, 103 (2): 624–62. DOI: 10.1257/aer.103.2.624

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior