The Swing Voter’s Curse in the Laboratory

This study is the first in its kind. Authors made a laboratory study of the swing voter’s curse and found
interesting insights on pivotal voter models. Their result is the following “voters act as if they are aware
of the swing voter’s curse and adjust their behavior to compensate”. In other words, the aftermaths of
their research support the Feddersen-Pesendorfer equilibrium model.

Now, going into some details, at the very beginning Battaglini et al. remember us that voter turnout is
hard to explain from rational models. Actually, assuming that voting may be costly or costless a turnout
is inconsistent with equilibrium behavior and observed behavior as well. In any case turnout looks
irrational. So, what could it be a possible explanation? Feddersen-Pesendorfer bet on rationalizing
voting behavior. Here is when the definition of swing voter’s curse came: “voter may rationally ‘delegate
the voter decision to more informed voters by abstaining even if voting is costless’” (p.1)

However, this theory remains highly controversial since it is not completely accepted by empirical
evidence where scientist found in favor and against results. Here is where Battaglini et al. and their lab
experiment make an important contribution. In a nutshell, the first laboratory study strongly support the
theory already mention. Some suppositions are the following: All voters have the same preferences and
asymmetric information. In general, poorly informed voters abstain and delegate to more informed
ones. And “when a partisan bias is introduced… uninformed voters vote strategically to balance out the
partisans’ votes”. The greater the turnout and margin of victory the greater the number of informed
voters. In the following paragraphs we will see how these authors overcome some previous failures of
other scholars as well as analyze some important variables in this field.

The model they made is made up with the assumption that voters deliberate by majority rule and that
there are two states of the world which are the two alternatives. In the voting equilibrium of this game,
they have only a unique equilibrium for the experimental parameters. Finally, in the experimental design
they use different tools to make their experiment reliable to rational standards under different
scenarios.