Voting Games: An Experimental Investigation

The central institution in democracies and shareholder firms is decision-making by voting. If all voters made decisions as if their vote were decisive, then true majority decisions would be obtained with certainty. Often, however, voters have incentives to hide their true preferences, thus preventing true majorities. In addition to mixed-strategy equilibria, in most voting games there is a unique pure-strategy equilibrium where all voters decide oppositely to their true preferences. Experimental behavior, however, clearly differs from any unique equilibrium and more often implies true majority decisions than unique pure-strategy equilibria predict.