Voter Beliefs and Strategic Voting in Two-Round Elections

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912920940791
• Author: Luke Plutowski,Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro,Matthew S. Winters
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Date: 01 December 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

2021, Vol. 74(4) 852 –865

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920940791

Political Research Quarterly

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912920940791

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Introduction

As far back as Downs (1957, 47), scholars have acknowl-

edged that rational voters “may at times vote for a party

other than the one [s]he most prefers.” This behavior,

casting a ballot for a candidate or party who is not the

voter’s first choice in order to maximize her influence

over the election result (and therefore her own utility) is

commonly referred to as “strategic voting.” Historically,

scholarship on strategic voting has focused mainly on

single-round plurality elections, like those in the United

States, United Kingdom, and Canada (e.g., Alvarez and

Nagler 2000; Blais and Nadeau 1996; Cain 1978; Cox

1997; Myatt 2007). Recently, theoretical discussions of

strategic voting in two-round (runoff) systems (Bouton

2013; Bouton and Gratton 2015; Cox 1997) have come to

be complemented by a small but growing empirical liter-

ature (Blais 2004; Blais et al. 2011; Fujiwara 2011;

Weitz-Shapiro and Winters 2019).

This study makes three contributions to the literature

on strategic voting in two-round systems. First, while

previous work has documented the existence of strategic

voting in runoff elections, we explore in greater depth the

kinds of strategic voting that are most prevalent. The

addition of a second round creates the possibility of

multiple types of strategic voting which are not possible

under simple plurality rules; for instance, voters who sin-

cerely support leading candidates may vote strategically

if the candidate has poor polling numbers in runoff sce-

narios (Van der Straeten, Laslier, and Blais 2016). For

settings where multiple varieties of strategic voting are

possible, this paper contributes to our understanding of

which, if any, of these types actually occur.

Second, several recent studies have examined which

types of voters are most likely to vote strategically, typi-

cally focusing on single-round elections. As compared

with a single-round system, the decision to cast a ballot

strategically is more complex in a two-round system with

large numbers of candidates. This study contributes to

our understanding of who votes strategically by testing

whether beliefs about the outcome of the election, in

addition to more commonly examined individual-level

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PRQXXX10.1177/1065912920940791Political Research QuarterlyPlutowski et al.

research-article2020

1University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, USA

2Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Luke Plutowski, Department of Political Science, University of Illinois

at Urbana–Champaign, 420 David Kinley Hall MC-713, 1407 W

Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Email: Plutows2@illinois.edu

Voter Beliefs and Strategic Voting in

Two-Round Elections

Luke Plutowski1, Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro2,

and Matthew S. Winters1

Abstract

How widespread is strategic voting in two-round electoral systems, and which types of voters are most likely to

engage in such behavior? While runoff elections are common in presidential systems around the world, research on

strategic voting in these settings remains limited. This paper explores four different types of strategic behavior that are

possible in two-round systems, including some types, such as “strong-to-weak” strategic voting, which are not possible

in single-shot elections. We use a nationwide survey to assess the incidence and correlates of strategic voting in

Brazil’s 2018 presidential election, where thirteen candidates competed in the first round. We find evidence of “weak-

to-strong” strategic voting at a similar rate to that documented in single-round elections in other countries. We find

little evidence of other types of strategic voting. Furthermore, we show that voters’ confidence in their predictions of

the likely electoral outcome and their ideological preferences strongly predict strategic voting. These results point to

the importance of accounting for voter beliefs and attitudes in addition to objective voter characteristics to explain

strategic voting.

Keywords

strategic voting, voting behavior, two-round presidential elections, Brazil

Article