Data, Measures and Methods

French Politics (2007) 5, 278–286. doi:10.1057/palgrave.fp.8200125

One-round vs Two-round Elections: An Experimental Study

André Blaisa, Jean-François Laslierb, Annie Laurentc, Nicolas Saugerd and Karine Van der Straetene

  1. aUniversité de Montréal, Montreal, Canada. E-mail: andre.blais@umontreal.ca
  2. bÉcole Polytechnique, France
  3. cCNRS-CERAPS, LILLE 2, France
  4. dCEVIPOF, France
  5. eÉcole d'Économie de Paris, France
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Abstract

The paper presents a series of experiments in which participants were invited to vote in four one-round elections and four two-round elections, with the same set of five candidates, among which three were viable and two were not. The experiments were designed to test the arguments put forward by Duverger and Cox about the propensity to vote sincerely or strategically in one-round and two-round elections. Our findings indicate little difference between the two systems. In both systems, there was a strong tendency to strategically desert the unviable candidates. The data thus support Cox over Duverger.

Keywords:

Maurice Duverger, Gary Cox, electoral systems, strategic voting, sincere voting, experiment