Economic models of voting: an empirical study on the electoral behavior in Romanian 2012 parliamentary elections

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an empirical research using data from 1276 questionnaires collected during the 2012 Romanian parliamentary elections. The goal of this research is to test some of the implications of several influential economic models of voting behavior: the calculus of voting model, the expressive voter model, the altruist voter model and the minimax regret model. Using χ^2 tests, residual analysis and logistic regression we argue that voters (instrumental or non-instrumental) deviate from the fundamental implications of the four economic models.

Keywords

• Public Choice Theory
• Voting
• Rational voter
• Instrumental behavior
• Noninstrumental behavior