EconTech

Economists often say that voting isn’t rational. The basic argument being that the marginal impact of the vote (almost always zero) is trivial compared to marginal cost of voting (anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours, times the wage rate.. definitely above zero, depending on if you live in a Republican district or Demo…no, not really, but neighborhood wealth is probably correlated). Considering that nearly half of adults vote (or is it half of registered voters vote..), I sympathize with the claim here that this argument has slipped from positive explanation to normative advocacy. If the argument was left there, then that would be terrible normative analysis at that. You also have to consider the benefits of voting versus not voting. You get your time cost* wage rate for not voting. But for voting, you get p*benefit election. p is the probability that your vote makes a difference (most of the popular research is done at national election levels, but local elections make a difference as well, so this value will vary for each issue on the ballot, and could be considerably larger for local values). Benefit election is the net economic value of the outcome to its counterfactual(s) (not to the status quo). Of course, if you voted for W. Bush (much less, twice), it would be a good idea to realize that your benefit election value is somewhere in the negative billions.

If anybody knows those Freakanomics people . . .. . . could you please ask them to stop saying, “We know that voting doesn’t make good economic sense.” I recognize that “Freakanomics” is intended to be entertainment, not scholarship, but I don’t think these dudes are doing economics any favors by spreading this kind of misconception. Voting isn’t a good way to make money, but that doesn’t mean it “doesn’t make good economic sense.” The full story is here (based on an article by an economist and two political scientists). I’ll repeat here for convenience, but I recommend going to the original entry to see some of the give-and-take in the comments:

With only a year to the next election, and with the publicity starting up already, now is a good time to ask, is it rational for you to vote? And, by extension, is it worth your while to pay attention to what Hillary, Rudy, and all the others will be saying for the next year or so? With a chance of casting a decisive vote that is comparable to the chance of winning the lottery, what is the gain from being a good citizen and casting your vote?The short answer is, quite a lot. First the bad news. With 100 million voters, your chance that your vote will be decisive–even if the national election is predicted to be reasonably close–is, at best, 1 in a million in a battleground state such as Ohio and less than 1 in 10 million or less in a less closely-fought state such as New York. (The calculation is based on the chance that your state’s vote will be exactly tied, along with the chance that your state’s electoral vote is necessary for one candidate or the other to win the Electoral College. Both these conditions are necessary for your vote to be decisive.) So voting doesn’t seem like such a good investment.

But here’s the good news. If your vote is decisive, it will make a difference for 300 million people. If you think your preferred candidate could bring the equivalent of a $50 improvement in the quality of life to the average American–not an implausible hope, given the size of the Federal budget and the impact of decisions in foreign policy, health, the courts, and other areas–you’re now buying a $1.5 billion lottery ticket. With this payoff, a 1 in 10 million chance of being decisive isn’t bad odds.

And many people do see it that way. Surveys show that voters choose based on who they think will do better for the country as a whole, rather than their personal betterment. Indeed, when it comes to voting, it is irrational to be selfish, but if you care how others are affected, it’s a smart calculation to cast your ballot, because the returns to voting are so high for everyone if you are decisive. Voting and vote choice (including related actions such as the decision to gather information in order to make an informed vote) are rational in large elections only to the extent that voters are not selfish.

That’s also the reason for contributing money to a candidate: Large contributions, or contributions to local elections, could conceivably be justified as providing access or the opportunity to directly influence policy. But small-dollar contributions to national elections, like voting, can be better motivated by the possibility of large social benefit than by any direct benefit to you. Such civically motivated behavior is consistent with both small and large anonymous contributions to charity.

The social benefit from voting also explains the declining response rates in opinion polls. In the 1950s, when mass opinion polling was rare, we would argue that it was more rational to respond to a survey than to vote in an election: for example, as one of 1000 respondents to a Gallup poll, there was a real chance that your response could noticeably affect the poll numbers (for example, changing a poll result from 49% to 50%). Nowadays, polls are so common that a telephone poll was done recently to estimate how often individuals are surveyed (the answer was about once per year). It is thus unlikely that a response to a single survey will have much impact.

So, yes, Virginia–and Ohio, and Florida, and Pennsylvania, and New Jersey–it is rational to vote. Utah, Wyoming, and Massachusetts: maybe it’s not worth your time. On the other hand, there’s a chance you could swing the national popular vote (which can affect the perception of a mandate) and in any case you’re likely to have close local races that can ultimately affect policies from schools to taxes to crime and punishment, so if you have any preferences there, it might very well be worth your time to cast your ballot and have a small chance of making a big difference.

Here’s our research article in the journal Rationality and Society spelling out the reasoning and evidence in more detail.

P.S. No, I didn’t vote today. I don’t think any of the local elections were close. I doubt there was serious opposition to any of the candidates.

P.P.S. I was motivated to post this by this Freakanomics article which brings up the old argument that it’s irrational to vote because the probability of your vote being decisive is so low. Stephen Dubner writes, “The irony is that the typical voter is more likely to have an impact in a smaller election than in a larger one, but it’s the bigger elections that draw far more voters.” Actually, it’s not such an irony at all: bigger elections have bigger effects, thus more motivation to vote. It all becomes clear when you realize that most people vote because of what they think will be good for the country, not for their own personal benefit. It’s fine for individual people to disagree with this–maybe Dubner and Levitt vote for other reasons–but it’s an unfortunate blind spot for them to identify rationality with selfishness.

I don’t mind that Levitt, Dubner, and Hagen don’t want to vote, or that they present arguments against voting, but I don’t think it’s so great for them to use their wide influence to spread the notion that “voting doesn’t make good economic sense” as if this is some sort of absolute truth. In all seriousness, I think it is far more consistent with the principles of Freakanomics to try to understand people’s behavior, not to snarkily dismiss it as not making sense.

Anyway, if any of youall know the Freakanomics people, please pass this message along to them. I recognize there are legitimate differences of opinion about the rationality of voting, but, as a person who’s thought a lot about these issues, I don’t think it’s a good idea for these misleading messages to be spread.