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Communication Among Voters Benefits the Majority Party

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  • Thomas R Palfrey
  • Kirill Pogorelskiy

Abstract

How does communication among voters affect turnout? In a laboratory experiment, subjects, divided into two competing parties, choose between costly voting and abstaining. Pre-play communication treatments, relative to the no communication control, are public communication (subjects exchange public messages through computers) and party communication (messages are public within one's own party). Communication benefits the majority party by increasing its turnout margin, hence its winning probability. Party communication increases turnout; public communication decreases total turnout with a low voting cost. With communication, there is no support for Nash equilibrium and limited consistency with correlated equilibrium.

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  • Thomas R Palfrey & Kirill Pogorelskiy, 2019. "Communication Among Voters Benefits the Majority Party," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(618), pages 961-990.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:129:y:2019:i:618:p:961-990.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecoj.12563
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Philippos Louis & Orestis Troumpounis & Nikolaos Tsakas & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2020. "Protest voting in the laboratory," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0247, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    3. Luís Aguiar-Conraria & Pedro C. Magalhães & Christoph A. Vanberg, 2020. "What are the best quorum rules? A laboratory investigation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(1), pages 215-231, October.
    4. Darius Schlangenotto & Wendelin Schnedler & Radovan Vadovič, 2020. "Against All Odds: Tentative Steps toward Efficient Information Sharing in Groups," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-24, August.
    5. Friedman, Daniel & Rabanal, Jean Paul & Rud, Olga A. & Zhao, Shuchen, 2022. "On the empirical relevance of correlated equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    6. Timothy N. Cason & Tridib Sharma & Radovan Vadovic, 2019. "Corelated beliefs: Predicting outcomes in 2X2 games," Purdue University Economics Working Papers 1321, Purdue University, Department of Economics.
    7. Kwiek, Maksymilian & Marreiros, Helia & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2019. "Voting as a war of attrition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 104-121.
    8. Mavridis, Christos & Serena, Marco, 2021. "Complete information pivotal-voter model with asymmetric group size and asymmetric benefits," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    9. Pedro Robalo, 2021. "Political Mobilization in the Laboratory: The Role of Norms and Communication," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-40, March.
    10. Cesar Martinelli & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2017. "Communication and Information in Games of Collective Decision: A Survey of Experimental Results," Working Papers 1065, George Mason University, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science.
    11. Jordi Brandts & Leonie Gerhards & Lydia Mechtenberg, 2018. "Deliberative Structures and their Impact on Voting under Economic Conflict," Working Papers 1022, Barcelona School of Economics.
    12. Christos Mavridis & Marco Serena, 2019. "Complete Information Pivotal-Voter Model with Asymmetric Group Size and Asymmetric Beneï¬ ts," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2019-17_2, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    13. Cason, Timothy N. & Sharma, Tridib & Vadovič, Radovan, 2020. "Correlated beliefs: Predicting outcomes in 2 × 2 games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 256-276.

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