Expressive vs. strategic voters: An empirical assessment

Leading theories of how voters choose between candidates are rooted in two very different paradigms, with starkly different behavioral implications. Exploiting the incentive structure of Germany's electoral system, I develop a novel set of empirical tests that pit the canonical pivotal voter model against alternative accounts according to which individuals derive expressive utility from supporting their most preferred candidate. The results show that neither paradigm can explain the most-salient features of the data. In addition, the evidence suggests that voters cannot be neatly categorized into sincere and strategic “types”.