Voter Turnout and Preference Aggregation

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ABSTRACT This paper studies how voter turnout affects aggregation of voter preferences in elections. Given that voting is costly, election outcomes disproportionately aggregate the preferences of voters with low voting cost or high preference intensity. We show that the correlation structure among preferences, costs, and perception of voting efficacy can be identified, and explore how the correlation affects preference aggregation. Using 2004 U.S. presidential election data, we find that minority, low-income, and less-educated voters are underrepresented. All of these groups tend to prefer Democrats except for the less-educated. Democrats would have won 8 more states if all eligible voters turned out. Keywords: voter turnout, preference aggregation, election Click here to view paper. Click here to view paper.
		PRESENTER Yasutora Watanabe Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
		RESEARCH FIELDS Empirical Microeconomics, Political Economics, Industrial Organization/Quantitative Marketing, Law and Economics
		DATE: 21 Sept 2016 (Wednesday)
		TIME: 4pm - 5.30pm
		VENUE: Meeting Room 5.1, Level 5 School of Economics Singapore Management University 90 Stamford Road Singapore 178903