Premium
Voting Equilibria in Multi‐candidate Elections
Author(s) -
DUGGAN JOHN,
SEKIYA YOJI
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of public economic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.809
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-9779
pISSN - 1097-3923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2009.01433.x
Subject(s) - constructive , voting , mathematical economics , simple (philosophy) , approval voting , constructive proof , computer science , anti plurality voting , cardinal voting systems , economics , mathematics , combinatorics , law , political science , process (computing) , philosophy , epistemology , politics , operating system
We consider a general plurality voting game with multiple candidates, where voter preferences over candidates are exogenously given. In particular, we allow for arbitrary voter indifferences, as may arise in voting subgames of citizen‐candidate or locational models of elections. We prove that the voting game admits pure strategy equilibria in undominated strategies. The proof is constructive: we exhibit an algorithm, the “best winning deviation” algorithm, that produces such an equilibrium in finite time. A byproduct of the algorithm is a simple story for how voters might learn to coordinate on such an equilibrium.