Your vote, by itself, isn’t likely to deliver change. But casting your vote might make you just a little bit happier.
That’s the theory of Julio Rotemberg, an economist at Harvard University, who thinks the major utility of voting might be that it makes us happier by helping us feel connected to people with whom we agree. The argument in Rotemberg’s new working paper, “Attitude-Dependent Altruism, Turnout and Voting,” relies on two assumptions about human nature: that we act more altruistically towards people who think the way we do, and that our well-being increases when our opinions are shared by others.
This could explain why turnout is so much higher in close elections. In a close election, voters are anxious to have their opinions validated by picking a winner. Just as importantly, voters turn out in a close election to help validate the opinions of people who support their candidate.
In lopsided elections, voters tend to already know whether or not their countrymen share their opinions. Voters who pick a long-shot, third-party candidate might be encouraged to vote as an expression of support of people who share their eccentric views.
Rotemberg’s theory might also explain why some public figures — Oprah, for example — are so influential. If Oprah‘s endorsement of Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries gave him a 1 million-vote bump, then, according to Rotemberg’s theory, Oprah fans voted in part to show support for their fellow fans and for Oprah herself. In return, if Obama wins, these same voters get a boost in well-being for seeing their choice carry the day.
Oddly enough, the Rotemberg altruistic-voter theory gives us another explanation for why most economists don’t vote: research indicates that economists tend to be less altruistic than most people, and they are more likely to be free riders.
Maybe economists are happiest sitting at home on election day, letting the rest of us validate or invalidate their opinions for them.
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If you consider that no matter who wins the election, there will always be data to write some sort of economic paper about. It could be that taking a partisan stance and voting can make an economist feel less objective about the following economic situation .
Maybe economists are just so happy that don’t need that extra bump.
Another thing that always interested me was whether or not potential impact of the winning candidate’s new policies affected voter behavior. If this was true, you’d expect that local elections would have a higher turnout in terms of percentage of the voting population than state elections, which would be higher than federal elections. This, however, doesn’t seem to be the case.
An explanation in line with the above idea is that voters’ willingness to vote is positively corrolated to the number of people the winning candidate’s new policies will affect, not simply their affect on the individual voter.
Maybe economists are less altruistic than other people because nobody agrees with us.
Economists would have to decide on one explicit opinion before they could be agreed (or disagreed) with.
Harry Truman famously asked once for a one-armed economist so that he could never say “on the other hand…”
We could change the economist voting outlook by elimination of the electoral college and go by straight popular tally.
I haven’t read the paper, but the article sure makes it sound like bad science. A new theory has to explain things that existing theory doesn’t. The traditional theory already explains why people are more likely to vote in tight elections (their vote is more likely to matter). And as to explaining the influence of people like Oprah on votes, why is such an explanation needed, when she wields even greater influence on which books people read?
A reasonable argument for the validation theory (that people are more likely to vote if they can vote for the winner) would be if election margins were statistically larger than poll margins of so-called likely voters. Is this in fact the case?
this is why when I tell people I vote for Nader, they look at me like I’m from Mars- I vote for him because it makes me happy- I’m proud of Nader- as to the other 2 guys…