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The Empirical Frequency of a Pivotal Vote

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Author Info
 Mulligan, Casey B
Hunter, Charles G

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Abstract

Some economic theories of voting suggest that competition leads to close elections, and that election closeness is a factor for bringing voters to the polls. How often in fact are civic elections decided by one vote? One of every 89,000 votes cast in U.S. Congressional elections, and one of 15,000 in state legislator elections, "mattered" in the sense that they were cast for a candidate that tied or won by one vote. We find an inverse relationship between election size and the frequency of one vote margins. Recounts, and other margin-specific election procedures, are determinants of the pivotal vote frequency. Copyright 2003 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Publisher Info
Article provided by Springer in its journal Public Choice.

Volume (Year): 116 (2003)
Issue (Month): 1-2 (July)
Pages: 31-54
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Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:116:y:2003:i:1-2:p:31-54

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  1. Chamberlain, Gary & Rothschild, Michael, 1981. "A note on the probability of casting a decisive vote," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 152-162, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Glaeser, Edward L & Sacerdote, Bruce & Scheinkman, Jose A, 1996. "Crime and Social Interactions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 111(2), pages 507-48, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. John Maloney & Andrew Pickering, 2008. "Ideology, Competence and Luck: What determines general election results?," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 08/607, Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK. [Downloadable!]
  2. Gelman, Andrew & Katz, Jonathan N. & Tuerlinckx, Francis, 2002. "The Mathematics and Statistics of Voting Power," Working Papers 1141, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. [Downloadable!]
  3. Darren Grant & Michael Toma, 2008. "Elemental tests of the traditional rational voting model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 173-195, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Gelman, Andrew & Katz, Jonathan N. & Bafumi, Joseph, 2002. "Standard Voting Power Indexes Don't Work: An Empirical Analysis," Working Papers 1133, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. [Downloadable!]
  5. Aaron Edlin & Andrew Gelman & Noah Kaplan, 2007. "Voting as a Rational Choice: Why and How People Vote to Improve the Well-Being of Others," NBER Working Papers 13562, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Eric Crampton & Andrew Farrant, 2004. "Expressive and Instrumental Voting: The Scylla and Charybdis of Constitutional Political Economy," Public Economics 0401002, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Andrew Leigh, 2004. "Does the World Economy Swing National Elections?," CEPR Discussion Papers 485, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. [Downloadable!]
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  8. Jean-Robert Tyran & Rupert Sausgruber, 2002. "A Little Fairness may Induce a Lot of Redistribution in Democracy," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2002 2002-30, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen. [Downloadable!]
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