The Performance of the Pivotal-Voter Model in Small-Scale Elections: Evidence from Texas Liquor Referenda / Stephen Coate, Michael Conlin, Andrea Moro.

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Coate, Stephen

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w10797.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2004.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making

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Abstract: How well does the pivotal-voter model explain voter participation in small-scale elections? This paper explores this question using data from Texas liquor referenda. It first structurally estimates the parameters of a pivotal-voter model using the Texas data. It then uses the estimates to evaluate both the within and out-of-sample performance of the model. The analysis shows that the model is capable of predicting turnout in the data fairly well, but tends, on average, to predict closer electoral outcomes than are observed in the data. This difficulty allows the pivotal-voter model to be outperformed by a simple alternative model based on the idea of expressive voting.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w10797 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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September 2004.

How well does the pivotal-voter model explain voter participation in small-scale elections? This paper explores this question using data from Texas liquor referenda. It first structurally estimates the parameters of a pivotal-voter model using the Texas data. It then uses the estimates to evaluate both the within and out-of-sample performance of the model. The analysis shows that the model is capable of predicting turnout in the data fairly well, but tends, on average, to predict closer electoral outcomes than are observed in the data. This difficulty allows the pivotal-voter model to be outperformed by a simple alternative model based on the idea of expressive voting.