IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0012446.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tactical Voting in Plurality Elections

Author

Listed:
  • Nuno A M Araújo
  • José S Andrade Jr
  • Hans J Herrmann

Abstract

How often will elections end in landslides? What is the probability for a head-to-head race? Analyzing ballot results from several large countries rather anomalous and yet unexplained distributions have been observed. We identify tactical voting as the driving ingredient for the anomalies and introduce a model to study its effect on plurality elections, characterized by the relative strength of the feedback from polls and the pairwise interaction between individuals in the society. With this model it becomes possible to explain the polarization of votes between two candidates, understand the small margin of victories frequently observed for different elections, and analyze the polls' impact in American, Canadian, and Brazilian ballots. Moreover, the model reproduces, quantitatively, the distribution of votes obtained in the Brazilian mayor elections with two, three, and four candidates.

Suggested Citation

  • Nuno A M Araújo & José S Andrade Jr & Hans J Herrmann, 2010. "Tactical Voting in Plurality Elections," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(9), pages 1-5, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0012446
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012446
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0012446
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0012446&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0012446?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cardoso, M. & Souza, J.T.G. & Neli, R.R. & Souza, W.E., 2023. "Scaling laws from Brazilian state election results point out that, the candidate’s chance to win increases by investing more campaign efforts in smaller electorates," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 619(C).
    2. Hygor Piaget M Melo & Saulo D S Reis & André A Moreira & Hernán A Makse & José S Andrade Jr., 2018. "The price of a vote: Diseconomy in proportional elections," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(8), pages 1-13, August.
    3. Raúl Jiménez & Manuel Hidalgo, 2014. "Forensic Analysis of Venezuelan Elections during the Chávez Presidency," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(6), pages 1-18, June.
    4. Ricardo Troncoso Sepúlveda, 2019. "Estimación del voto estratégico en elecciones parlamentarias chilenas 2013," Revista Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, vol. 27(1), pages 169-184, February.
    5. Anghel Negriu & Cyrille Piatecki, 2012. "On the performance of voting systems in spatial voting simulations," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 7(1), pages 63-77, May.
    6. Braha, Dan & de Aguiar, Marcus A. M., 2018. "Voting contagion: Modeling and analysis of a century of U.S. presidential elections," SocArXiv mzxnr, Center for Open Science.
    7. Hygor P M Melo & Nuno A M Araújo & José S Andrade Jr., 2019. "Fundraising and vote distribution: A non-equilibrium statistical approach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-9, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0012446. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.