Strategic Voting and Strategic Candidacy

Strategic voting in British elections

Approval voting (AV) has been defended and criticized from many different viewpoints. In this paper, I will concentrate on two topics: preference intensities and strategic behavior. A voter is usually defined as voting sincerely under AV if he or she gives a vote to all candidates standing higher in his or her ranking than the lowest-ranking candidate for whom he or she gives a vote. There are no ‘holes’ in a voter’s approval set.1 Since this kind of behavior is extremely rare, it has been claimed that approval voting makes strategic voting unnecessary (Brams and Fishburn 1978). On the other hand, Niemi (1984) has argued (see also van Newenhizen and Saari 1988a,b), that even though strategic voting may be rare under AV, even incere voting may require a considerable amount of strategic thinking under this rule. If strategic voting is defined by the fact that a voter gives his or her vote to a candidate who is lower in his or her ranking than some candidate for whom he or she does not vote (see, e.g., Brams and Sanver 2006), I will be studying strategic behavior but not strategic voting under AV here.KeywordsPublic ChoiceVote RuleStrategic BehaviorVote ShareSincere BehaviorThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

How widespread is strategic voting in two-round electoral systems, and which types of voters are most likely to engage in such behavior? While runoff elections are common in presidential systems around the world, research on strategic voting in these settings remains limited. This paper explores four different types of strategic behavior that are possible in two-round systems, including some types, such as “strong-to-weak” strategic voting, which are not possible in single-shot elections. We use a nationwide survey to assess the incidence and correlates of strategic voting in Brazil’s 2018 presidential election, where thirteen candidates competed in the first round. We find evidence of “weak-to-strong” strategic voting at a similar rate to that documented in single-round elections in other countries. We find little evidence of other types of strategic voting. Furthermore, we show that voters’ confidence in their predictions of the likely electoral outcome and their ideological preferences strongly predict strategic voting. These results point to the importance of accounting for voter beliefs and attitudes in addition to objective voter characteristics to explain strategic voting.

The literature on strategic voting has provided evidence that some electors support large parties at the voting booth to avoid wasting their vote on a preferred but uncompetitive smaller party. In this paper we argue that district conditions also elicit reactions from abstainers and other party voters. We find that, when ballot gains and losses from different types of responses to the constituency conditions are taken into account, large parties still benefit moderately from strategic behaviour, while small parties obtain substantial net ballot losses. This result stems from a model that allows for abstention in the choice set of voters, and uses counterfactual simulation to estimate the incidence of district conditions in the Spanish general elections of 2000 and 2008.

We study the voting game where agents' preferences are endogenously decided by the information they receive, and they can collaborate in a group. We show that strategic voting behaviors have a positive impact on leading to the "correct" decision, outperforming the common non-strategic behavior of informative voting and sincere voting. Our results give merit to strategic voting for making good decisions.

We consider a voting setting where candidates have preferences about the outcome of the election and are free to join or leave the election. The corresponding candidacy game, where candidates choose strategically to participate or not, has been studied %initially by Dutta et al., who showed that no non-dictatorial voting procedure satisfying unanimity is candidacy-strategyproof, that is, is such that the joint action where all candidates enter the election is always a pure strategy Nash equilibrium. Dutta et al. also showed that for some voting tree procedures, there are candidacy games with no pure Nash equilibria, and that for the rule that outputs the sophisticated winner of voting by successive elimination, all games have a pure Nash equilibrium. No results were known about other voting rules. Here we prove several such results. For four candidates, the message is, roughly, that most scoring rules (with the exception of Borda) do not guarantee the existence of a pure Nash equilibrium but that Condorcet-consistent rules, for an odd number of voters, do. For five candidates, most rules we study no longer have this guarantee. Finally, we identify one prominent rule that guarantees the existence of a pure Nash equilibrium for any number of candidates (and for an odd number of voters): the Copeland rule. We also show that under mild assumptions on the voting rule, the existence of strong equilibria cannot be guaranteed.

Choice experiments, a survey methodology in which consumers face a series of choice tasks requiring them to indicate their most preferred option from a choice set containing two or more options are used to generate estimates of consumer preferences to determine the appropriate allocation of public resources to competing projects or programs. The analysis of choice-experimental data typically relies on the assumptions that choices of the non-status quo option are demand-revealing and choices of the status quo option are not demand-revealing, but, rather, reflect an underlying behavioral bias in favor of the status quo. This paper reports the results of an experiment demonstrating that both of those assumptions are likely to be invalid. We demonstrate that choice experiments for a public good are vulnerable to the same types of strategic voting that affect other types of multiple-choice voting mechanisms. We show that owing to the mathematics of choice-set design, what actually is strategic voting often is misinterpreted as a behavioral bias for the status quo option. Therefore, we caution against using current choice-experimental methodologies to inform policy making about public goods.

In this paper I study strategic voting behavior in the Argentine Senate election for the City of Buenos Aires in 2013. I estimate and analyze the voter transition matrix between the primary and general elections using a Bayesian hierarchical model for ecological inference, utilizing a rich data set of ballot box data. The results show that strategic behavior is not widespread among the electorate in Buenos Aires. In particular, at least 75 % of voters who had the opportunity to avoid vote wasting by behaving strategically did not. I also find high levels of vote wasting when analyzing other provinces during the same election cycle. These results suggest that these electorates might be composed of a mixture of voters with strategic and expressive motivations, where the expressive factions dominate.

We develop a definition of equilibrium for agenda formation in general voting settings. The definition is independent of any protocol. We show that the set of equilibrium outcomes for any Pareto efficient voting rule is uniquely determined, and in fact coincides with that of the outcomes generated by considering all full agendas. Under voting by successive elimination (or amendment), the set of equilibrium outcomes corresponds with the Banks set. We also examine the implications in several specific settings and show that studying equilibrium agendas can lead to sharp predictions, in contrast with well-known “chaos” theorems.

A race for technological supremacy in AI could lead to serious negative consequences, especially whenever ethical and safety procedures are underestimated or even ignored, leading potentially to the rejection of AI in general. For all to enjoy the benefits provided by safe, ethical and trustworthy AI systems, it is crucial to incentivise participants with appropriate strategies that ensure mutually beneficial normative behaviour and safety-compliance from all parties involved. Little attention has been given to understanding the dynamics and emergent behaviours arising from this AI bidding war, and moreover, how to influence it to achieve certain desirable outcomes (e.g. AI for public good and participant compliance). To bridge this gap, this paper proposes a research agenda to develop theoretical models that capture key factors of the AI race, revealing which strategic behaviours may emerge and hypothetical scenarios therein. Strategies from incentive and agreement modelling are directly applicable to systematically analyse how different types of incentives (namely, positive vs. negative, peer vs. institutional, and their combinations) influence safety-compliant behaviours over time, and how such behaviours should be configured to ensure desired global outcomes, studying at the same time how these mechanisms influence AI development. This agenda will provide actionable policies, showing how they need to be employed and deployed in order to achieve compliance and thereby avoid disasters as well as loosing confidence and trust in AI in general.

Does Pivotality Convey Information to Voters: Some Experimental Results

Most formal models of the economic behavior of farmer cooperatives picture that behavior as deriving from the optimization of a single objective function determined by a single agent (Helmberger and Hoos 1962), by a group of agents with identical goals (Phillips), or by simple (nonstrategic) majority-rule voting of the membership on a single issue. Models incorporating voting assume single-peaked preferences and no logrolling (interdependent voting) between issues; therefore, no voting paradoxes arise and the cooperative's objective is determined by the preferences of its median member (Knoeber and Baumer, Zusman). With few exceptions (Zusman) previous models thus abstract from the thorny issue of group choice in cooperatives when members have at least partially divergent goals and engage in strategic behavior. The lack of attention to group choice in previous models reflects the primary interest of earlier theoreticians in industrial organization issues. These authors concentrated on how the pricing and output decisions of cooperatives might differ from those of investorowned firms (IOFs) and affect the competitive balance of an industry. Theoretical analysis of how cooperatives allocate costs and benefits among a heterogenous membership, an issue that has become increasingly exigent as cooperatives have developed larger and more diverse memberships, was largely ignored. Cooperatives face many decisions, however, in which members' preferences cannot be assumed to be homogenous. Examples include the pricing of different services to members, including the possibility of differential pricing based on members' patronage; the location of facilities; and the allocation of overhead costs and pool receipts. Furthermore, the prefernces of management and the board of directors on many of these issues may differ from those of the rank-and-file membership. Although both the management literature and many theorists have informally discussed decision making in the context of heterogenous preferences (e.g., Helmberger and Hoos 1962, p. 290; Helmberger; Trifon), there is a need to develop models that address this issue explicitly and in so doing suggest alternative ways of structuring cooperatives to deal with group choice. The main thesis of this paper is that many decisions involving the allocation of costs and benefits within cooperatives can be usefully conceptualized as n-person cooperative games.' In the parlance of game theory, games are games in which players are allowed to communicate and make binding commitments with one another. The theory of games is usually used to model situations in which there are gains from joint action by a potential coalition of players, but where the players must bargain among themselves about how the net benefits of the joint action are to be shared. Failure to agree on an allocation of net benefits among players prevents the coalition from forming (Roth).

The Scope and Standards of Professional School Nursing Practice states that school nurses should evaluate the quality and effectiveness of their practice. School nurses have not yet identified and adopted outcomes by which this effectiveness can be measured. This study used focus groups during a national meeting of school nurse leaders to identify the desired outcomes that could be used to measure the efficacy of school nursing practice. Ten desired outcome themes were identified with numerous specific indicators as possible ways to measure the desired outcome in each theme. The student-, school-, and nurse-focused outcome themes were as follows: (a) increased student seat time, (b) receipt of first aid and acute care measures, (c) receipt of competent health-related interventions or skills, (d) meeting of the comprehensive needs of children with chronic conditions, (e) enhanced school health via wellness promotion and disease prevention measures, (f) referrals, (g) safe environment, (h) enhanced school health via community outreach, (i) cost-effective school nurse services, and (j) student, parent, and staff satisfaction. The school nurse participants were supportive of having potential outcomes identified and unanimously endorsed the findings at the conclusion of the study. They have provided a comprehensive framework from which evaluation tools can be developed to measure the efficacy of school nursing.

Two critical success factors within the retail industry are quality management practices and continuous learning. Presents empirical evidence suggesting a link between a set of retail management practices and potential learning outcomes. Retailers need to focus on developing a market orientation that is linked to structures, processes and systems necessary to build learning organizations. All interactions with customers and other key stakeholders can lead to a potential learning outcome. To develop and maintain competitive advantage, retailers need to share information with their key stakeholders, build long‐term alliances and link market orientation with a learning orientation. It was found that all levels of employees need time to reflect on and review information critical to their action outcomes and the action outcomes of their key stakeholders. Retailers must capitalize on each potential learning experience by reflecting on, documenting and transferring knowledge, and creating a climate which facilitates learning through the effective exchange of knowledge across all sections of the organization.

Preface Unit I: We Co-construct Our Groups by Communicating 1. Why Study Group Communication Pitfalls? Overview of the Book Why Do Groups Matter Enough to Make a Study of Them? Definitions of Communication, and Casting a Wide Net to Include All Pitfalls and Breakdown Group Communication Pitfalls by Commission or by Omission The Breakdown-Conducive Group Framework Why Should We Focus Our Study of Groups on Group Communication Pitfalls? 2. How Grouping and Group Direction Help Create Effective Group Experiences The Universals of Grouping Activity The Framework for Grouping and Group Direction Rhetorical Situation and a Purgatory Puddle Unit II: We Struggle to Co-construct and Frame Our Circumstances and Processes 3. Pitfalls in and Supragroup Exigencies Groups as Systems Purgatory Puddle Pitfalls Supragroup Pitfalls for a Group How to Expect, Detect, and Correct These Pitfalls 4. Personnel Pitfalls Wrong Group for the Task Pitfalls Traits Orientation Style Circumstances How to Expect, Detect, and Correct These Pitfalls 5. Pitfalls in Grouping Techniques, Tendencies, and Process Prizes Grouping Techniques Technique Pitfalls Grouping Tendencies: Norms and Roles Norm Pitfalls Role Pitfalls Process Prizes Process Prize Pitfalls Deliberation Outcome Pitfalls 6. Pitfalls in Confusion, Conformity, Conflict, and Group Consciousness: Grouping Concomitants Confusion Pitfalls Conformity Pitfalls Conflict Pitfalls Consciousness Pitfalls How to Expect, Detect, and Correct These Pitfalls 7. Pitfalls in Vision and Direction Giving Vision/Outcome Pitfalls Savior Complex Pitfalls Ascension Pitfalls Transitions Pitfalls How to Expect, Detect, and Correct These Pitfalls Unit III: We Co-construct Our Exigencies for Grouping Into Our Group Outcomes 8. (Un)Intended Group Outcomes Dynamics Involved in Potential Group Outcomes A Set of Potential Group Outcomes 9. To Group or Not to Group, That Is the Question General Exigencies Against Grouping Distrust of Grouping Distrust of Self as a Grouping Member Distrust of Any Aspect of This Particular Grouping Effort Inertia and Specific Exigencies Against Grouping How Exigencies Against Grouping May Manifest Expecting, Detecting, and Correcting These Pitfalls: General Orientational Advice 10. Observing Groups Well Observing Groups Improving Observational Focus and Quality Observing the Purgatory Puddle Observing The Way/Process Observing the Vision/Outcome and the Savior Complex