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Coordinated voting in sequential and simultaneous elections: some experimental evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Sugato Dasgupta ,
Kirk A. Randazzo ,
Reginald S. Sheehan  and
Kenneth C. Williams
Sugato Dasgupta
Affiliation:
Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Kirk A. Randazzo
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA
Reginald S. Sheehan
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
Kenneth C. Williams*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
*
e-mail: willia59@msu.edu
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Abstract

This paper studies a situation wherein a set of voters choose between two alternatives in the presence of a payoff externality. Specifically, regardless of her intrinsic preference, a voter's payoff is maximized should she vote for the alternative that garners a majority of the votes cast. Are votes coordinated on a single alternative? Using laboratory experiments, we examine voting patterns in sequential voting and simultaneous voting elections. Across both election types, we also vary the amount of information that an individual voter has regarding the intrinsic preferences of the other voters. Our main findings are as follows. In the “low” information treatment, sequential voting elections facilitate coordinated voting. However, in the “high” information treatment, voting patterns are not dependent on how the election is structured.

Keywords

Payoff externalityCoordinated votesSequential electionSimultaneous electionInformation

JEL classification

D72: Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D82: Asymmetric and Private Information • Mechanism Design
Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 315 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10683-007-9167-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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