1 / 1

Strategic Voting Voting decision conditioning on pivotal event

Inferring Strategic Voting Kei Kawai Yasutora Watanabe Northwestern University Northwestern University . Introduction. Model. Estimation. (Partial) Identification. (Partial) Identification of Preference

tender
Download Presentation

Strategic Voting Voting decision conditioning on pivotal event

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Inferring Strategic Voting Kei Kawai Yasutora Watanabe Northwestern University Northwestern University Introduction Model Estimation (Partial) Identification • (Partial) Identification of Preference • Use restriction that no one votes for his least preferred candidate. • Partial b/c T is not observable, and (C2) is the only restriction. • Example: magnitude of age parameter depends on T • (Partial) Identification of the Extent of Strategic Voting • Given preference, sincere voting outcome is computed as Δm(0) • An observation can be always • be written as convex combination • of Δm(0) and vmSTR(T). • If Md→∞ (Many observations within same district), observations should be on line segment L,butedgecould be either L’ or L • If D→∞ (Many observations of districts), observations should be on the same line segment within district. • Corresponding to partial identification, we used moment inequality estimator (Pakes, Porter, Ho, and Ishii, 2006) • We constructed our moment inequality as: • Fix some θand T. For any random shocks ξ and α, model predicts outcome vPRED(T,θ) • In each district d, regress vPRED(T,θ) on demographic and candidate characteristics and obtain βd(T,θ) for each district. Do the same with vDATAto obtain βdDATA. • Note that this regression is just an auxiliary model as in Indirect Inference. • Find βsupd (θ)=sup βd(T,θ)and βinfd (θ)=inf βd(T,θ)by varyingTd∈T(vddata)and integrate them over distribution of shocks ξ and α. • Construct moments as E[βinfk,d(θ₀)-βk,dDATA] ≤ 0, and • E[βsupk,d(θ₀)-βk,dDATA] ≥ 0. • Strategic Voting • Voting decision conditioning on pivotal event • Example: Plurality rule election with 3 candidates • a voter has preference a≻b≻c over candidates • a sincere voter votes for a • a strategic voter makes decision conditioning on the event of tying, that is, how strategic voter behaves depends on her belief on pivot probT={Tab,Tbc,Tca}∈Δ³, • if her belief is T={1,0,0}, she vote for a • if her belief is T={0,0,1}, she vote for a • if her belief is T={0,1,0}, she vote for b Note: she would never vote for c • Strategic voting is important in many models of politics • Strategic voting plays an important role in actual elections. • However, how important strategic voting is isan empirical question. • What we do • propose an estimable model of strategic voting • added sincere voters to Myerson and Weber(1993) • study (partial) identification of the model • not straightforward due to multiplicity of equilibria • estimation using inequality based estimator • use only aggregate data from a Japanese election • counterfactual experiment: i) proportional representation, ii) sincere voting under plurality • In each election d∈{1,...,D}, there are K≥3 candidates, Md municipalities m₁,m₂,...,mMd, and Nm voters in municipality m • Voter n's utility of having candidate k in office is • unk= - (θIDxn- θPOSzkPOS)2 +θQLTYzkmQLTY+ξkm+εnk • where xn: voter characteristics • zk: candidate characteristics • ξkm : candidate-municipality shock • εnk : voter idiosyncratic shock • Sincere voter votes according to preference: • vote for candidate k ⇔ unk≥unl,∀l • Strategic voter takes into consideration tie probabilities. • vote for candidate k ⇔ ūnk(Tn)≥ūnl (Tn),∀l • Expected utility from voting for k: • ūnk (Tn)=(1/2)∑l∈{1,..,K}Tn,kl×(unk-unl) • Voter types: αnm=0 is sincere and αnm=1 is strategic • Probability that voter n in municipality m is strategic: Pr(αnm=1|αm)=αm • where αm: municipality level random shock, which is • assumed to follow a Beta distribution in estimation. • Equilibrium • (C1) votes cast votes to maximize utility given T, i.e., • As Nm→∞, the vote share outcome is approximated as • vkm(T) ≡ (1-αm) vkmSIN + αm vkmSTR(T) • where (g and fm are dist. of εand characteristics x) • vkmSIN: vote share by sincere voters to candidate k, i.e., vkmSIN≡∬1{unk≥unl, ∀l}g(ε)dεfm(x)dx • vkmSTR(T): vote share by strategic voters to candk, i.e., • vkmSTR≡∬1{unk(T)≥unl(T), ∀l}g(ε)dεfm(x)dx • (C2) consistency in belief, i.e., T∈T(v) • vk>vl ⇒Tkj≥Tlj ∀k,l,j∈{1,...,K} • Pivot prob. involving cand. with high vote shares are larger than those with low vote shares: v₁>v₂>v₃ ⇒T₁₂ ≥T₁₃ ≥T₂₃ • Set of outcome W={T,{v}} is non-empty, and not a singleton • Restriction: no voter votes for his least preferred candidate. • However, beyond this restriction, the model leaves considerable freedom in how vkmSTR(T) is linked to voter preferences. - This is because solution concept requires T∈T(v),and we do not observe T. Results • We find large fraction [75.3%, 80.3%] of strategic voters • Utility goes down as the distance between the voter’s municipality and the candidate’s hometown increases. • New candidates was more preferred than the incumbents and the candidates who had some experience. • Ideological positions are LDP=0, • DPJ=[-3.00, -2.99], JCP=[-3.47, -3.45], YUS=[-0.068,-0.065] • Based on the estimated parameters, we can calculate the fraction of misaligned voting. • We find small fraction [2.4%, 5.5%] of misaligned voting • This is close to the existing estimates of "strategic voting" (3% to 15%) • Based on the estimated parameters, we can also conduct counterfactual policy experiment. We did i) hypothetical “sincere voting” experiment, and ii) proportional representation. Strategic vs. Misaligned Voting • Distinguishing Strategic and Misaligned Voting • misaligned voting: voting for a candidate other than the one the voter most prefers • strategic voting: decision making conditioning on pivotal event • misaligned voting is subset of strategic voting • (strategic voter may not necessarily engage in misaligned voting) • Existing empirical studies measures misaligned voting (and not the extent of strategic voting!) • distinction is critical • extent of strategic voting is model primitive • extent of misaligned voting is only an equilibrium object • Data • 2005 Japanese General Election Data • We use the particular structure that • there are many elections (D→∞) • there are breakdowns of votes available at sub-district (municipality) level

More Related