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Sticky votes

Author

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  • Arenas, Andreu
Abstract
Are vote choices instrumental or expressive? This paper studies the effects of the ban in the Basque Country of a political party, Batasuna, which continued to contest the elections after its ban by calling for a null vote, that has expressive but no instrumental value. Exploiting the heterogeneity in the pre-ban presence of Batasuna and in the enforcement of the ban across municipalities and elections, I find that null voters are two-thirds of the potential Batasuna voters in a regular election, indicating that expressive motivations alone explain two-thirds of the votes for this party. Null votes lower the electoral threshold and raise the instrumental incentives for the remaining voters to vote for smaller parties, but the behavioral effect of the ban on the fragmentation of city councils is close to zero. In a region with salient identity politics, the results are consistent with prevalent expressive voting, in contrast with the common assumption of purely instrumental voters.

Suggested Citation

  • Arenas, Andreu, 2016. "Sticky votes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 132(PA), pages 12-25.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:132:y:2016:i:pa:p:12-25
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.09.006
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    • Andreu ARENAS, 2016. "Sticky Votes," LIDAM Reprints CORE 2763, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).

    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Damien Bol & André Blais & Jean-François Laslier, 2018. "A mixed-utility theory of vote choice regret," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(3), pages 461-478, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Voting behavior; Expressive voting; Identity voting; Instrumental voting; Political bans;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

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