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Not-so-strategic voters.Evidence from an in situ experiment during the 2017 French presidential election

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  • Antoinette Baujard

    (UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne, GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Isabelle Lebon

    (UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université, CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

An experiment carried out in situ during the 2017 French presidential election provides the natural conditions in which to disentangle the motivations of expressive voting and strategic voting as determinants of voters' choice. Under the two-round plurality rule, when voters vote for a single candidate in the first round, they may wish primarily to express which is their favorite candidate, or, rather, to influence the outcome of the second-round outcome by strategic voting. These two motives may coincide or conflict. We show that insincere strategic voting is relatively low in this context since it represents less than 7% of the votes cast. When the expressive and the strategic motives conflict with each other, i.e., where expression requires giving up any influence on the outcome of the election, we show that voters are twice as likely to eschew strategic voting as to vote strategically.

Suggested Citation

  • Antoinette Baujard & Isabelle Lebon, 2022. "Not-so-strategic voters.Evidence from an in situ experiment during the 2017 French presidential election," Post-Print halshs-03607824, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03607824
    DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2022.102458
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03607824
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    References listed on IDEAS

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