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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Agarwal, Sarthak; Chatterjee, Somdeep; Manchanda, Manhar |
| Abstract: | How do voters respond to adverse climatic shocks? We study this question in India, where voters can cast a formal "None of the Above" (NOTA) ballot, allowing us to distinguish pure protest voting from directed electoral sanctioning. We combine assembly-constituency election data from 2013-2023 with highfrequency satellite-based data on temperature, precipitation, and agricultural productivity. We first show that high temperature exposure is negatively associated with satellite-measured agricultural productivity. Further, temperature shocks increase turnout, but do not increase NOTA vote shares. Instead, they reduce the vote shares of recontesting incumbents and ruling-party candidates. Regular degree days reduce both turnout and NOTA vote shares. Heterogeneity analyses show that agricultural dependence shapes the participation response, while unirrigated agriculture mediates NOTA responses. Overall, the results suggest that climate shocks mobilize voters and produce targeted electoral punishment, rather than leading voters to express generalized dissatisfaction through pure protest voting. |
| Keywords: | Elections, Protest Voting, Temperature Shocks, NOTA |
| JEL: | D72 O13 Q54 P48 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1789 |
| By: | Bobkova, Nina |
| Abstract: | This paper shows how the voting rule impacts which characteristics of an alternative voters learn about. Before casting their vote, voters face a trade-off between learning about an objective quality of the alternative or about their idiosyncratic match. I show that the further the quota is from majority rule, the less voters learn about the objective quality of the alternative and the more dispersed are their beliefs about it. Among all quotas, the majority rule uniquely (i) aligns votes and beliefs, (ii) maximizes voters’ ex-ante utility, and (iii) aggregates full information for large elections. |
| Keywords: | Committees; Information acquisition |
| JEL: | D71 D72 D82 D83 |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19777 |
| By: | Plaza, Alejandro (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) |
| Abstract: | When voters receive real-time information about an ongoing election, do they coordinate strategically — and does that coordination respect ideological boundaries? I argue that viability signals produce ideologically bounded coordination: voters shift toward the most viable candidate within their political neighborhood rather than gravitating toward any national leader. To test this, I exploit a natural experiment in Peru's 2026 presidential election, where a logistical failure caused some polling stations to vote one day late, after partial results were already public, generating exogenous variation in information access across otherwise comparable voters. Informed voters concentrated their votes roughly 57 percent more than uninformed voters. A further test reveals that concentration rose sharply within the centrist bloc but not the right bloc, consistent with within-bloc rather than cross-ideological coordination. These findings illuminate how strategic voting operates under extreme party fragmentation and suggest that information revelation may strengthen rather than distort electoral representation. |
| Date: | 2026–07–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:dzntx_v1 |
| By: | Aman Ray; Srikanth Pai (Assistant Professor, Madras School of Economics, Chennai, India.) |
| Abstract: | We study a two-party spatial competition model that extends the Hotelling–Downs framework by allowing voter abstention. Voters share a common voting window size and participate only if at least one party lies within that window. Parties choose policy positions to maximize their vote-share margin. We show that if a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium exists, both parties must choose the same policy position that generalizes the median voter principle. In the classical model, the median splits the total electorate into two equal halves; here, the equilibrium position must split the participating voters within a fixed voting window into two equal parts. We then give necessary and sufficient conditions on the voter distribution for the existence of pure-strategy Nash equilibria. We identify broad classes of voter distributions under which pure-strategy equilibria exist.Length: 20 pages |
| Keywords: | Spatial competition · Abstention · Median voter theorem Nash equilibriumClassification-JEL: |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mad:wpaper:2026-306 |
| By: | Federle, Jonathan; Mohr, Cathrin; Schularick, Moritz |
| Abstract: | We study the political consequences of inflation surprises, focusing on votes for extremist and populist parties in 365 elections in 18 advanced economies since 1948. Inflation surprises are regularly followed by a substantial increase in vote shares of extremist, anti-system, and populist parties. An inflation surprise of 10 percentage points leads to a 15% increase in their vote share, comparable to the increase typically seen after financial crises. We show that the change in voting behavior is particularly pronounced when real wages decline, and less evident when real wages are not affected. Our paper points to considerable political after-effects of unexpected inflation. |
| Keywords: | Inflation |
| JEL: | D72 E31 N40 N10 |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19741 |
| By: | Osvaldo Meloni (Universidad Nacional de Tucumán) |
| Abstract: | Does the fiscal architecture of subnational government shape how citizens vote in national elections? This paper argues that fiscal correspondence is a systematic determinant of deliberate invalid voting in Argentine presidential elections through an attribution channel. In provinces where public spending is financed predominantly by automatic transfers determined by law, voters cannot connect fiscal outcomes to electoral choices, the transmission chain from presidential ballot to observable fiscal outcome becomes too opaque for rational voters to decode. Rather than casting a deliberate valid ballot, voters take the low-cost exit of depositing an invalid one. Using a balanced panel of 23 Argentine provinces across nine presidential elections from 1989 to 2023, I find that higher fiscal correspondence is associated with significantly fewer blank and invalid ballots. The effect is concentrated on blank ballots — deliberate protest votes — rather than null ballots, consistent with the theoretical prediction that the mechanism operates on the deliberate disengagement margin. Results are robust to instrumental variable estimation, exclusion of oil-producing provinces, and structural break tests around the 2001 crisis. |
| Keywords: | fiscal federalism, presidential elections, fiscal correspondence, Argentina |
| JEL: | D72 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aoz:wpaper:403 |
| By: | Bouton, Laurent; Castanheira, Micael; Stashko, Allison; Genicot, Garance |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the manipulation of electoral maps by political parties, commonly referred to as gerrymandering. At the core of our analysis is the recognition that not all inhabitants of a district vote. This is important for gerrymandering as districts must have the same population size, but only voters matter for electoral outcomes. We propose a model of gerrymandering that allows for heterogeneity in voter turnout across individuals. This model reveals a new strategy for the gerrymanderers: the pattern is to pack-crack-pack along the turnout dimension. Specifically, parties benefit from packing low-turnout supporters and high-turnout opponents, while creating cracked districts that combine moderate-to-high-turnout supporters with lower-turnout opponents. These findings yield testable empirical implications about the relationship between partisan support, turnout rates, and electoral maps. Using a novel empirical strategy based on comparing maps proposed by Democrats and Republicans during the 2020 U.S. redistricting cycle, we test these predictions and find supporting evidence. |
| Keywords: | Redistricting; Gerrymandering; Voter turnout |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19617 |
| By: | Francesco Capozza; Ruben Durante; Siddharth George |
| Abstract: | Voters in multiparty systems often fail to coordinate on majority-preferred parties. Using constituency-level election data linked to party-ideology measures across 96 countries, we show that in 20–30% of multiparty elections since 1940 the Condorcet winner does not win, and in roughly 10% the winner is the Condorcet loser. Failures are most common under plurality rule and in fragmented, volatile party systems, and systematically disadvantage opposition and culturally liberal parties while benefiting organizationally strong ones. Can information fix this? In four pre-registered experiments around Indian elections (N > 4, 000), constituency-level polls shift voting intentions by at most 2 percentage points, a precisely estimated null, despite modest belief updating, though undecided voters become 7 points more likely to support a viable party. A model with expressive motives rationalizes both results: polls refine beliefs but lack the leverage to overcome entrenched attachments, identifying boundary conditions on polls as coordination devices. |
| Keywords: | condorcet winner, coordination failures, polls |
| JEL: | D72 K16 P17 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12857 |
| By: | Conconi, Paola; Cucu, Florin; Gallina, Federico; Nardotto, Mattia |
| Abstract: | We study votes of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on the approval of free trade agreements (FTAs). Against widespread Eurosceptic arguments, we find that MEPs are responsive to the interests of their electorate and their re-election chances increase with the extent to which their votes on trade agreements are aligned with their constituents’ interests. By contrast, US legislators’ votes on FTAs are disconnected from their electorate’s interests and do not impact their re-election chances. Our results suggest that legislators’ accountability on a policy issue may depend on its salience relative to other policies in the legislators’ sphere of competence. |
| Keywords: | Electoral accountability; Trade agreements; EU and US legislation |
| JEL: | F13 D72 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19609 |
| By: | Carattini, Stefano; Chatterjee, Anomitro; Cherry, Todd |
| Abstract: | Biased beliefs affect real-world decisions, including political solutions to societal challenges. One crucial example is environmental policy: people tend to underestimate the incentive effect of Pigouvian policies. Addressing biased beliefs at scale is then paramount. In the days leading up to a ballot initiative in Washington state, we implemented a large-scale field experiment providing information on carbon taxes to over 285, 000 individuals. We complemented it with a survey experiment of about 1, 000 individuals, with the same treatments as in the field experiment, shedding light on social desirability bias and mechanisms around belief revision. Using data at the voting precinct level, we show that our intervention increases revealed support for carbon taxes, mainly for a treatment centered around earmarking of tax revenue, which was one of the design features of the ballot initiative. We find the effect to be stronger in precincts relatively opposed to the initiative, and less exposed to media coverage of carbon taxes, and more exposed to coverage challenging their effectiveness. |
| Keywords: | Carbon taxes; Voting behavior; Facebook ads; Natural field experiments |
| JEL: | C93 D72 D82 H23 Q54 |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19850 |
| By: | Campa, Pamela; Saygin, Perihan; Tumen, Semih |
| Abstract: | How can women’s representation improve in countries that do not embrace legislated gender quotas? We study municipal elections in Turkey during 2009-2019. A conservative dominant party, Erdogan’s AKP, is often challenged by a Kurdish party that promotes gender equality in electoral lists. Exploiting within-municipality variation, we find that the Kurdish party winning leads AKP to increase its share of female candidates by 25 to 30% in the next election. Other opposition parties winning has a substantially lower impact. Our results suggest that one party empowering women can help reducing gender gaps in lists across-the-board. |
| Keywords: | Electoral competition |
| JEL: | D72 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19700 |
| By: | Edoardo Grillo; Juan S. Morales; Alessandra Moresi |
| Abstract: | We study how politicians' adoption of social media, and the use of moral language, affect electoral returns. We compile a new dataset covering over 4, 000 Twitter accounts and almost five million tweets by US House candidates over 2008-2018. We document several descriptive facts: social media use rises and falls with electoral cycles, politicians' use of moral rhetoric increased over the period of study, and moral rhetoric is strongly associated with higher social media engagement. Using a regression discontinuity design on close primary elections, we find that social media use by candidates has a positive but imprecisely estimated effect on vote shares. This effect is strongly heterogeneous depending on the use of moral rhetoric, and is large and statistically significant for candidates with above-median moral language use. A complementary design using only candidates with Twitter also reveals a causal effect of moral language on vote shares. We also document that relative to other social media features (negativity, out-group animosity, toxicity) moral rhetoric drives more positive engagement. Finally, we show that increased coverage from mainstream news media and campaign donations are important mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | social media, moral rhetoric, political behavior, elections |
| JEL: | D72 P0 L86 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12874 |
| By: | Bluhm, Richard; Hodler, Roland; Schaudt, Paul |
| Abstract: | We study how the design of subnational political borders shapes the salience of ethnicity in politics. We introduce a framework for measuring how political borders align with a country's ethnic geography at the micro level. We then leverage quasi-experimental variation in the alignment introduced by Kenya's 2010 constitutional reform, which divided the country's eight provinces into 47 counties. Our results suggest that ethnofederal reforms, i.e., reforms that increase the alignment between political borders and ethnic geography, would reduce ethnic voting in national elections. Finally, we evaluate alternative border designs and derive the design that would minimize ethnic voting. |
| Keywords: | Kenya |
| JEL: | D02 D72 H77 J15 O55 |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19715 |
| By: | Della Lena, Sebastiano (Monash University); Merlino, Luca (ECARES, Universite libre de Bruxelles); Zenou, Yves (Monash University) |
| Abstract: | We study opinion dynamics in a social network consisting of two groups. Agents update their opinions by conforming to members of their own group while rejecting the views of the opposing group (affective polarization), and by listening to a media outlet that may provide biased information. We characterize the long-run opinions and identify when affective polarization and media bias lead to ideological polarization, persistent disagreement, or failures of learning. We also derive when information interventions or censorship improve { the accuracy of average opinions} and reduce disagreement, and when they backfire: better information helps only under specific media bias configurations and when directed to the agents we identify as most effective at propagating it through the network. |
| Keywords: | signed networks, opinion dynamics, affective polarization, group antagonism, information campaigns, targeting |
| JEL: | C7 D7 D85 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18823 |
| By: | Chernov, Mikhail; Elenev, Vadim; Song, Dongho |
| Abstract: | We propose a novel time-series econometric framework to forecast U.S. Presidential election outcomes in real time by combining polling data, economic fundamentals, and political prediction market prices. Our model estimates the joint dynamics of voter preferences across states. Applying our approach to the 2024 Presidential Election, we find a two-factor structure driving the vast majority of the variation in voter preferences. We identify electorally similar state clusters without relying on historical data or demographic models of voter behavior. Our simulations quantify the correlations between state-level election outcomes. Failing to take the correlations into account can bias the forecasted win probability for a given candidate by more than 10 percentage points. We find Pennsylvania to be the most pivotal state in the 2024 election. Our results provide insights for election observers, candidates, and traders. |
| JEL: | C32 C53 D72 P00 |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19836 |
| By: | Herrera, Helios; Trombetta, Federico |
| Abstract: | We define populism as a platform proposing a policy based on a mis-specified model of the world, a simple alternative worldview. Voters’ trust in the traditional/mainstream political class evolves over time and depends on traditional politicians’ performance once in offce. Crucially, political distrust behaviourally increases how gullible voters are to the simple alternative worldviews proposed by populists. Traditional politicians are aware of the populist threat and try to prevent it. In this novel framework we study when voters select populist politicians, how populist and their alternative worldviews survive/recur and their long-run effect on several measures of voter’s welfare. We show that the link between distrust and alt-truth gives rise a to a low-trust trap, where trust in the political class never recovers, leading to populists recurring in power. This trap/cycles need not always be detrimental to voters, as the increased pervasiveness of alt-worldviews also has a disciplining effect on traditional politicians. |
| JEL: | D72 D83 D91 P0 |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19674 |
| By: | Toshihiro Okubo; Ilan Noy |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how identity shapes trade policy attitudes and electoral behavior during periods of geopolitical trade conflict. Using the Okubo-NIRA panel survey of Japanese workers, we study electoral preference updating around two major shocks: the April 2025 U.S. tariff shock and the November 2025 China-Taiwan shock. We argue that workers might evaluate trade policy not only as individuals or as Japanese but also through their attachment to the firms that employ them and to those firms' interests. This channel is salient for workers in internationally exposed firms - i.e., those that are directly affected by tariffs, supply-chain disruption, and economic-security concerns. Using individual fixed effects and instrumental-variable specifications based on workers' pride in their employer and its interaction with international exposure, we show that firm pride predicts changes in concrete tariff attitudes, which in turn are associated with shifts in party support. Interestingly, our results distinguish general support for free trade as a policy principle from tariff preferences contingent on geopolitical trade conflicts. Our findings suggest that geopolitical trade shocks shape political preferences through the identities of workers tied to their export-exposed employing firms. |
| Keywords: | trade, preferences, identity, pride |
| JEL: | F13 F51 P45 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12903 |