The effects of district magnitude on voting behavior

Hix, Simon, Hortala-Vallve, Rafael ORCID: 0000-0002-9677-497X and Riambau-Armet, Guillem (2017) The effects of district magnitude on voting behavior. Journal of Politics, 79 (1). 356 - 361. ISSN 0022-3816

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Abstract

Is there more sincere voting in multi-member districts than in single-member districts? Existing research on this question is inconclusive, at least in part because it is difficult with observational data to isolate the effect of district magnitude on voting behavior independently from voters’ preferences or number of parties. Hence, we investigate this issue in a laboratory experiment, where we vary district magnitude while keeping the distribution of voters’ preferences and the number of parties constant. We find that voting for the preferred party (sincere voting) increases with district magnitude. This is consistent with existing findings from observational data. We also discover a surprising result: a high incidence of ‘frontrunner’ voting, which cannot be easily explained by existing research.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jop/current
Additional Information:	© 2016 Southern Political Science Association
Divisions:	Government
Subjects:	J Political Science > JC Political theory
Date Deposited:	18 Aug 2016 15:08
Last Modified:	15 Nov 2024 09:24
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/67506

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