Strategic Voting Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Strategic voting (also referred to as tactical voting) describes the decision-making process of individuals who fail to express their true preferences at the ballot box in order to prevent their least preferred candidate from winning an election. It assumes that individuals maintain a level of knowledge about others’ voting preferences and a candidate’s probability of winning. This type of voter behavior is often studied in primary elections and first-past-the-post electoral systems where only one candidate can secure the party’s nomination or has the opportunity to take office. It is thought that such situations force voters to examine the viability of their preferred candidate’s electoral success and vote in a way that maximizes their individual preferences while minimizing the potential for their least preferred candidate to achieve electoral success. Most models of strategic voting incorporate rational choice theory to explain if such tactical voting behavior exists, how it works, and when it is employed in the electoral process. Tactical voting is difficult to observe and measure because it requires both the knowledge of genuine voter preferences as well as the actual voting behavior. While survey research provides empirical evidence for the latter, the former is often unknown. For these reasons, scholars of voting behavior disagree about the presence, impact, and extent of strategic voting.

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