Chapter 94 Three-way Experimental Election Results: Strategic Voting, Coordinated Outcomes and Duverger's Law

This chapter discusses here all used plurality voting. Thus, subjects could cast the vote vectors (1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1) and (0, 0, 0) for the candidates O, G and B, respectively. After each election, the candidate with the most votes was declared the winner and subjects were paid accordingly. If a tie occurred between two or more candidates, the winner was selected randomly with the tied candidates having equal probabilities of being selected. After each election, subjects were informed of the number of votes received by each candidate, the election winner and their payoffs. The equilibria are based on expectations about (1) which candidates will be in contention in a close race (conditional tie probabilities) and (2) the values voters place on breaking ties in their favor. For these payoffs, only the relative strengths of candidates O and G matter in selecting the equilibrium. When O is perceived strong while G is weak, all majority voters vote for O.