IS IT IRRATIONAL TO VOTE?

Posted on October 17, 2008 by Philip

IS IT IRRATIONAL TO VOTE? Kids, is it irrational for you to vote? Political scientists have been struggling with this issue for over fifty years. David Runciman has a review in the London Review of Books for October 9 of FREE RIDING by David Tuck. The central issue in the review is the problem created by the fact that, as Runciman puts it, “General elections are never decided by a single vote, so no one vote is ever going to be missed.” Runciman says that the question of why bother to vote at all “has haunted the study of politics for the past fifty years or more.” Since “the benefit you can expect to derive is precisely zero, since your contribution is literally worthless, then it starts to look like a serious waste of your precious resources.”

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3 Responses to IS IT IRRATIONAL TO VOTE?

  1. Dick Weisfelder says:
    October 20, 2008 at 10:42 AM

    There’s a law of big numbers factor at work. If a considerable number or people on the same side of the fence come to the conclusion that voting is a waste of their time, then outcomes can change.

    A good example is the significant number of Reagan conservatives who apparently sat on their hands during the campaign and permitted Caret to beat Ford.

  2. phil says:
    October 20, 2008 at 10:48 AM

    I think of deliberately not voting in protest as similar to voting for a third party. But it could be comparable to “I’m not going to cross the street to vote for X.”

  3. Molly says:
    October 28, 2008 at 11:06 PM

    FiveThirtyEight now suggests that those who live in New Mexico, New Hampshire, Virginia or Colorado could have a one in ten million chance of casting the deciding vote.
    http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/1-in-10000000.html

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