Journal Articles

Comparing Strategic Voting Under FPTP and PR

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Based on recent work that suggests that voters in proportional representation (PR) systems have incentives to cast strategic votes, the authors hypothesize that levels of strategic voting are similar in both first-past-the-post (FPTP) and PR systems. Comparing vote intentions in majoritarian elections in the United States, Mexico, Britain, and Israel to PR elections in Israel and the Netherlands, the authors find that a substantial proportion of the voters desert their most preferred candidate or party and that patterns of strategic voting across FPTP and PR bear striking similarities. In every election, smaller parties tend to lose votes to major parties. Because there tend to be more small parties in PR systems, tactical voting is actually more common under PR than under FPTP. The findings suggest that whatever the electoral system, voters focus on the policy consequences of their behavior and which parties are likely to influence policy outcomes following the election.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Comparative Political Studies

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publication., 2010

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

00104140

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Vol. 43, No. 1, Jan. 2010. pp. 61-90

Subject(s)

rational choice
coalitions
Proportional Representation
Tactical voting
Strategic scrutiny
Comparing Strategic Voting Under FPTP and PR

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