Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • 2020
  • Working Paper
  • HBS Working Paper Series

On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout

By: Louis Kaplow and Scott Duke Kominers
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:32
ShareBar

Abstract

Prominent theory research on voting uses models in which expected pivotality drives voters' turnout decisions and hence determines voting outcomes. It is recognized, however, that such work is at odds with Downs's paradox: in practice, many individuals turn out for reasons unrelated to pivotality, and their votes overwhelm the forces analyzed in pivotality-based models. Accordingly, we examine a complementary model of large-N elections at the opposite end of the spectrum, where pivotality effects vanish and turnout is driven entirely by individuals' direct costs and benefits from the act of voting itself. Under certain conditions, the level of turnout is irrelevant to representativeness and thus to voting outcomes. Under others, “anything is possible"; starting with any given distribution of preferences in the underlying population, there can arise any other distribution of preferences in the turnout set and thus any outcome within the range of the voting mechanism. Particular skews in terms of representativeness are characterized. The introduction of noise in the relationship between underlying preferences and individuals' direct costs and benefits from voting produces, in the limit, fully representative turnout. To illustrate the potential disconnect between the level of turnout (a focus of much empirical literature) and representativeness, we present a simple example in which, as noise increases, the turnout level monotonically falls yet representativeness monotonically rises.

Keywords

Voter Turnout; Paradox Of Voting; Pivotality; Elections; Model; Voting; Behavior; Theory

Citation

Kaplow, Louis, and Scott Duke Kominers. "On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-097, March 2020.
  • Read Now

About The Author

Scott Duke Kominers

Entrepreneurial Management
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • January 12, 2023
    • a16zcrypto.com

    Progressive Decentralization: A High-level Framework

    By: Jad Esber and Scott Duke Kominers
    • December 7, 2022
    • Harvard Business Review Digital Articles

    Why Decentralized Crypto Platforms Are Weathering the Crash

    By: Shai Bernstein and Scott Duke Kominers
    • Winter 2022
    • Oxford Review of Economic Policy

    Distributing a Billion Vaccines: COVAX Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities

    By: Eric Budish, Hannah Kettler, Scott Duke Kominers, Erik Osland, Canice Prendergast and Andrew A. Torkelson
More from the Authors
  • Progressive Decentralization: A High-level Framework By: Jad Esber and Scott Duke Kominers
  • Why Decentralized Crypto Platforms Are Weathering the Crash By: Shai Bernstein and Scott Duke Kominers
  • Distributing a Billion Vaccines: COVAX Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities By: Eric Budish, Hannah Kettler, Scott Duke Kominers, Erik Osland, Canice Prendergast and Andrew A. Torkelson
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College