Learning by voting

de Rebecca B. Morton, Kenneth Williams

"Learning by Voting presents a theoretical and empirical comparison of simultaneous voting elections with sequential voting. The authors investigate whether sequential voting elections, such as drawn-out primaries or early and mail-in balloting, allow voters to learn about candidates; whether non-representative early voters have an undue influence on the electoral results; and whether simultaneous voting elections give an advantage to well-known candidates." "The unique approach in Learning by Voting uses both a formal theoretical model to analyze and make predictions about the effects of sequence on voter choices and the use of laboratory elections to empirically evaluate the predictions. The laboratory setting allowed the authors to control factors that are extremely difficult to measure in naturally occurring elections. This approach provides valuable results on the effect of sequence on voting, results that are not available or extremely costly to provide if restricted to naturally occurring data. The theory and empirical analysis is accessible to non-theoreticians so that this work can be read by nonspecialists."--Jacket.