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Comparing Strategic Voting Under FPTP and PR

¹ Michigan State University
² Duke University
³ Universite de Montreal
⁴ Community Midrasha of Durham-Chapel Hill
⁵ Hebrew University of Jerusalem
⁶ University of Oxford
⁷ University of Toronto

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: renan.levine{at}utoronto.ca.

	Abstract

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 firstpastthepost (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.

First published on July 30, 2009, doi:10.1177/0010414009341717

Comparative Political Studies 2010;43:61.

A more recent version of this article appeared on January 1, 2010


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