Expressive and Strategic Behavior in Legislative Elections in Argentina

Abstract

In this paper I study strategic voting behavior in the Argentine Senate election for the City of Buenos Aires in 2013. I estimate and analyze the voter transition matrix between the primary and general elections using a Bayesian hierarchical model for ecological inference, utilizing a rich data set of ballot box data. The results show that strategic behavior is not widespread among the electorate in Buenos Aires. In particular, at least 75 % of voters who had the opportunity to avoid vote wasting by behaving strategically did not. I also find high levels of vote wasting when analyzing other provinces during the same election cycle. These results suggest that these electorates might be composed of a mixture of voters with strategic and expressive motivations, where the expressive factions dominate.