Do Citizens Vote Sincerely (If They Vote at All)? Theory and Evidence from U. S. National Elections

Understanding citizens’ electoral behavior (e.g., selective abstention and split ticket voting), represents a fundamental step in the analysis of democratic institutions. In this paper, we assess the extent to which sincere voting can explain observed patterns of participation and voting in U.S. national elections. We propose a unified model of turnout and voting in presidential and congressional elections with heterogeneous voters. We estimate the model using individual level data for eight presidential election years (1972-2000). Our main findings can be summarized as follows. First, a non-negligible fraction of the American electorate does not vote sincerely, and only a relatively small fraction of observed split-ticket voting can be explained by sincere voting. Second, there is a systematic, positive relationship between information and turnout. Third, the American electorate has become relatively more polarized over time.Elections, turnout, selective abstention, split-ticket voting

A Structural Model of Turnout and Voting in Multiple Elections, Fourth Version

This paper develops a unified approach to study participation and voting in multiple elections. The theoretical setting combines an “uncertain-voter” model of turnout with a spatial model of voting behavior. We apply our framework to the study of turnout and voting in U.S. presidential and congressional elections. We structurally estimate the model using individual-level data for the 2000 elections, and quantify the relationships between observed individual characteristics and unobserved citizens’ ideological preferences, information, and civic duty. We then use the estimated model, which replicates the patterns of abstention, selective abstention, split-ticket voting, and straight-ticket voting observed in the data, to assess the effects of policies that may increase citizens’ information and sense of civic duty on their turnout and voting behavior.elections, turnout, selective abstention, split-ticket voting

Do Voters Vote Sincerely?

In this paper we address the following questions: (i) To what extent is the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely testable or falsifiable? And (ii) in environments where the hypothesis is falsifiable, to what extent is the observed behavior of voters consistent with sincere voting? We show that using data only on how individuals vote in a single election, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is irrefutable, regardless of the number of candidates competing in the election. On the other hand, using data on how the same individuals vote in multiple elections, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is potentially falsifiable, and we provide general conditions under which the hypothesis can be tested. We then assess whether the behavior of voters is consistent with sincere voting in U.S. national elections in the post-war period. We find that by and large sincere voting can explain virtually all of the individual-level observations on voting behavior in presidential and congressional U.S. elections in the data.voting, spatial models, falsifiability, testing

Do Citizens Vote Strategically (if they vote at all)? Evidence from U.S. National Elections

Two prominent facts emerge from data on U.S. presidential and congressional elections. First, often people vote a split-ticket, that is, they vote for different parties' candidates for President and for Congress. Second, many citizens do not go to vote and, after going to vote, some decide to vote in one election but not in the other (typically more people vote for President than for Congress). This paper addresses two main questions: (1) To what extent is split-ticket voting the natural result of individuals who vote in each election according to their immediate policy preferences? In particular, what is the proportion of citizens who vote ''sincerely'' versus ''strategically''? (2) Can we simultaneously account for the patterns of abstention and voting observed in the data? To answer these questions, we propose and estimate, using individual-level data on voting choices in presidential and congressional elections from 1972 to 2000, a unified model of turnout and voting with asymmetric information. Our main findings are as follows. While a majority of citizens behave ''sincerely'', a significant proportion of citizens behave ''strategically''. Split-ticket voting is not only generated by strategic behavior but also by sincere behavior. In contrast to the implications of the ''balancing theories'', we find that a big portion of split-ticket behavior comes from extreme voters and that those middle-of-the-road voters that split their ticket do so as a result of voting according to their policy preferences in each election separately without any need for balancing purposes. We use the estimated model to conduct counterfactual experiments to assess the effect of sincere behavior, information, and abstention on electoral outcomes and the insurgency of divided governments.split-ticket, abstention, strategic voters

Do Voters Vote Ideologically?, Third Version

In this paper we address the following question: To what extent is the hypothesis that voters vote “ideologically” (i.e., they always vote for the candidate who is ideologically “closest” to them) testable or falsifiable? We show that using data only on how individuals vote in a single election, the hypothesis that voters vote ideologically is irrefutable, regardless of the number of candidates competing in the election. On the other hand, using data on how the same individuals vote in multiple elections, the hypothesis that voters vote ideologically is potentially falsifiable, and we provide general conditions under which the hypothesis can be tested.voting, spatial models, falsifiability, testing

A Structural Model of Turnout and Voting in Multiple Elections

In this paper, we propose a unified approach to study participation and voting in multiple elections. The theoretical framework combines an “uncertain-voter” model of turnout with a spatial model of voting behavior. We apply our framework to study turnout and voting in U.S. national (presidential and congressional) elections, and structurally estimate the model using individual-level data for the 2000 elections. The estimated model replicates the patterns of abstention, selective abstention, split-ticket voting, and straight-ticket voting observed in the data. We also quantify the relationships between observed individual characteristics and unobserved citizens’ ideological preferences, information, and civic duty. Finally, we assess the effects of policies that may increase citizens’ information and sense of civic duty on their turnout and voting behavior.elections, turnout, selective abstention, split-ticket voting

Do Voters Vote Sincerely? Second Version

In this paper we address the following question: To what extent is the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely testable or falsifiable? We show that using data only on how individuals vote in a single election, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is irrefutable, regardless of the number of candidates competing in the election. On the other hand, using data on how the same individuals vote in multiple elections, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is potentially falsifiable, and we provide general conditions under which the hypothesis can be tested. We then consider an application of our theoretical framework and assess whether the behavior of voters is consistent with sincere voting in U.S. national elections in the post-war period. We find that by and large sincere voting can explain virtually all of the individual-level observations on voting behavior in presidential and congressional U.S. elections in the data.voting, spatial models, falsifiability, testing.

Do Voters Vote Sincerely?

In this paper we address the following question: To what extent is the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely testable or falsifiable? We show that using data only on how individuals vote in a single election, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is irrefutable, regardless of the number of candidates competing in the election. On the other hand, using data on how the same individuals vote in multiple elections, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is potentially falsifiable, and we provide general conditions under which the hypothesis can be tested. We then consider an application of our theoretical framework and assess whether the behavior of voters is consistent with sincere voting in U.S. national elections in the post-war period. We find that by and large sincere voting can explain virtually all of the individual-level observations on voting behavior in presidential and congressional U.S. elections in the data.

Cryptanalysis of Hash Functions

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the applicability of the recently developed biclique [KRS11] to the preimage attack performed by Sasaki and Aoki [SA09]. This led to a slightly improved time complexity of 2^{121.3} compression function evaluations and a greatly improved memory complexity of 2^{20.7} 32-bit memory words. Thanks to this reasonable memory requirement, an attack faster than brute force can be actually implemented, though its execution time would still be infeasibleope

Negative Ion Beam profile estimation on STRIKE calorimeter by means of Newton’s Method

openStima del profilo del fascio di ioni negativi sul calorimetro STRIKE attraverso l'applicazione del metodo di Newton. Il metodo riguarda l'ottimizzazione di 573 immagini Sintetiche e Sperimentali che raffigurano ciascuna 5 impronte termiche del fascio di ioni negativi su delle tegole di STRIKE e ogni fascetto è ben approssimato da una gaussiana 2-d, che dipende da 5 parametri (ampiezza, posizioni x e y dei centroidi, sigma-x e sigma-y). L'obiettivo del metodo di Newton applicato a questo caso era quello di minimizzare l'errore quadratico medio tra le funzioni che descrivono l'immagine originale e quella ricostruita. Nelle conclusioni si è visto che questo metodo di regolarizzazione dell'immagine è molto preciso, ma che tuttavia la convergenza dello stesso dipende molto dalla bontà della soluzione iniziale e che potrebbe non essere il metodo che meglio si adatta a questo caso. In futuro potranno essere testati e utilizzati metodi di ottimizzazione del Machine Learning.Negative Ion Beam profile estimation on STRIKE calorimeter by means of Newton's Method. The method concerns the optimisation of 573 Synthetic and Experimental Images where there are 5 beamlets of the negative ion beam on STRIKE tiles and each beamlet is well approximated by a 2-d Gaussian, which depends on 5 parameters (such as amplitude, positions x and y of the centroids, sigma-x and sigma-y). The objective of Newton's method applied to this case was to minimize the mean squared error between the functions describing the original image and the reconstructed one. In the conclusions it was seen that this image regularization method is very precise, but however its convergence depends a lot on the goodness of the initial solution and it may not be that this was the best method best that suits this case. Machine learning optimization methods can be tested and used in the future