A General Model of Tactical and Inverse Tactical Voting

In: British journal of political science, Band 16, Heft 3, S. 395-404

Abstract

'Tactical voting' refers to voting contrary to one's nominal preferences. The usual form of tactical voting described in the literature consists of 'third' party supporters in plurality electoral settings voting for one of the two major parties in their constituency. This Note aims to demonstrate both theoretically and empirically the existence of the converse phenomenon, i.e. followers of one of the two big parties voting for a small one. We shall call this phenomenon 'inverse tactical voting' (ITV).