QSS student and faculty member publish game theoretic article on voter turnout
Cameron Guage '22 and Assistant Professor of Mathematics Feng Fu recently published an article in Dynamic Games and Applications. Their article is titled, "Asymmetric Partisan Voter Turnout Games," and its abstract is as follows:
Since Downs proposed that the act of voting is irrational in 1957, myriad models have been proposed to explain voting and account for observed turnout patterns. We propose a model in which partisans consider both the instrumental and expressive benefits of their vote when deciding whether or not to abstain in an election, introducing an asymmetry that most other models do not consider. Allowing learning processes within our electorate, we analyze what evolutionarily stable strategies are rationalizable under various conditions. Upon varying electorate size, the partisan split of the electorate, and the degree to which an electorate takes underdog considerations into account in its payoff structure, we find that different equilibria arise. Our model predicts comparative statics that are consistent with voter behavior, specifically affirming a "size effect," in which turnout decreases as electorate size increases. Furthermore, relaxing some of our preliminary assumptions eliminates some of the discrepancies between the predictions of our model and empirical voter behavior. In particular, our work demonstrates that misperceptions about the partisan split of an electorate may account for high turnout behavior.
Cameron is a member of the Class of 2022 at Dartmouth College, and he is majoring in Quantitative Social Science and Mathematics. He first encountered game theory in QSS 18, "Introduction to Game Theory," taken in winter of 2019, and in the winter of 2020 he started a project with Professor Fu that is supported by the Mellam Family Foundation Research Award at Dartmouth, a Sophomore Research Scholarship, and the Byrne Scholars Program. In the 2020-21 academic year, Cameron is a presidential scholar with Professor Jason Houle of the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth. As a presidential scholar, Cameron is working on importing, cleaning, and analyzing a new longitudinal survey on race and student loan debt that were collected as part of Professor Houle's book project.
Professor Fu, who is a member of the QSS Steering Commitee, teaches QSS 30.04, " Evolutionary Game Theory and Application." He regularly advises QSS students and is currently working on evolutionary dynamics of human behavior.