Like-Minded Voters: An Endogenous Foundation for Electoral Factions and Groups

• In Event: Elections and Electoral Systems

Abstract

Ethical (or group-based) voting models generate behavior that is potentially more precise and realistic than standard pivotal voting models, but raise the question of how the electorally relevant groups form in the first place. We develop a voting model that endogenously generates electoral groups consistent with group-based voting by focusing upon like-minded voters. Like-minded voters are those voters who in equilibrium can agree on a best response given the behavior of all voters not within their faction. Restricting equilibria to those in which no like-minded faction has an incentive to deviate eliminates sincere voting and reduces the types of multi-position equilibria that may exist. If we consider turnout, there exist exclusively Duvergerian equilibria (those in which all voters vote for a very small number of positions), but with potentially bad welfare properties. For example, all positions that receive votes may be unanimously inferior to all positions that could have been chosen instead.

Authors

• Timothy J. Feddersen

• Benjamin Ogden, Texas A&M University