Rankings Matter Even When They Shouldn't: Bandwagon Effects in Two-Round Elections

Vincent  Pons; Clémence  Tricaud

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

Rankings Matter Even When They Shouldn't: Bandwagon Effects in Two-Round Elections

by Vincent Pons and Clémence Tricaud

Abstract

To predict others’ behavior and make their own choices, voters and candidates can rely on information provided by polls and past election results. We isolate the impact of candidates’ rankings using an RDD in French local and parliamentary two-round elections, where up to 3 or 4 candidates can qualify for the second round. Candidates who barely ranked first in the first round are more likely to run in the second round (5.6pp), win (5.8pp), and win conditionally on running (2.9 to 5.9pp), than those who barely ranked second. The effects are even larger for ranking second instead of third (23.5, 9.9, and 6.9 to 12.2pp), and ranking third instead of fourth also increases candidates’ second round outcomes (14.6, 2.2, and 3.0 to 5.0pp). These results are largest when the candidates have the same political orientation (making coordination relatively more important and desirable), but they remain strong when two candidates only qualify for the second round (and there is no need for coordination), suggesting that bandwagon effect is an important driver of voter behavior and election outcomes.

Keywords: Strategic voting; coordination; Bandwagon effect; regression discontinuity design; French elections; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; France;

Language: English

Format: Print

41 pages

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Citation:

Pons, Vincent, and Clémence Tricaud. "Rankings Matter Even When They Shouldn't: Bandwagon Effects in Two-Round Elections." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-026, September 2018.

This paper assesses the relative influence of contextual drivers of voter behavior, such as economic growth, voting rules, and media consumption, vs. individual factors, such as race and education. We use individual-level panel data covering the vast majority of the U.S. voting-age population from 2008 to 2014 and track changes in movers’ behavior as they cross state lines to estimate a value-added model including voter, state, and election fixed effects, and allowing movers’ behavior to be arbitrarily different, both in levels and average trend, from non-movers’. We find that state characteristics explain about 52% of the observed cross-state variation in turnout, and voter characteristics the residual 48%. The factors most strongly correlated with state fixed effects are the availability of Election Day voter registration and no-excuse absentee voting, as well as electoral competitiveness. Education is the only variable showing a significant correlation with average voter effects.

In French parliamentary and local elections, candidates ranked first and second in the first round automatically qualify for the second round, while a third candidate qualifies only when selected by more than 12.5% of registered citizens. Using a fuzzy RDD around this threshold, we find that the third candidate’s presence substantially increases the share of registered citizens who vote for any candidate and reduces the vote share of the top two candidates. It disproportionately harms the candidate ideologically closest to the third and causes her defeat in one-fifth of the races. Additional evidence suggests that these results are driven by voters who value voting expressively over voting strategically for the top-two candidate they dislike the least to ensure her victory as well as by third candidates who, absent party-level agreements leading to their dropping out, value the benefits associated with competing in the second round more than influencing its outcome.

Case | HBS Case Collection | June 2017 (Revised August 2018)

Goodbye IMF Conditions, Hello Chinese Capital: Zambia's Copper Industry and Africa's Break with Its Colonial Past

Rafael Di Tella, Vincent Pons, Sarah Mehta and David Lane

Over the past several decades, rapid growth in Chinese investment and trade has created for Africa a new development partner. China represents an alternative to U.S. and European nations whose past imperialism, resource avarice, and economic dictates—through the conditionality of IMF and World Bank lending—remain a negative legacy. This case uses the story of Zambia's Chambishi copper mine, which was purchased in 1998 by the state-owned China Non-Ferrous Metals Mining Corporation, to illustrate China’s growing interest and involvement in the African continent. While many in Africa welcome the substantial Chinese investment, resentment over labor abuses, low pay, and substandard working conditions at some Chinese-owned enterprises fuels anti-China sentiment. At Chambishi copper mine, a 2005 explosion, caused by management's shoddy adherence to safety standards, killed nearly 50 miners and sparked outrage among Zambians. The explosion marked the first in a long series of protests and safety violations that would unfold at Chambishi over the next ten years.

Keywords: China; Africa; Zambia; copper; imperialism; Development economics; IMF; World Bank; ODA; debt relief; geopolitics; Growth and Development; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Labor and Management Relations; History; Development Economics; China; Zambia; Africa;

Citation:

Di Tella, Rafael, Vincent Pons, Sarah Mehta, and David Lane. "Goodbye IMF Conditions, Hello Chinese Capital: Zambia's Copper Industry and Africa's Break with Its Colonial Past." Harvard Business School Case 717-034, June 2017. (Revised August 2018.) View Details

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Rankings Matter Even When They Shouldn't: Bandwagon Effects in Two-Round Elections

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