ABSTRACT
Voters have preferences over parties and candidates. Their ability to express these preferences in an election is constrained by the ballot choices that are presented to them and in the way in which ballots are aggregated into outcomes. Farquharson provides a modern, game theoretic analysis of tactical voting, but, as he notes, it has a long and venerable heritage; Pliny the Younger describes an episode of tactical voting in the Roman Senate in the year 105. A common intuition concerning tactical voting, usually referred to as the marginality hypothesis, is that it should be more prevalent in close elections. Minor party supporters are seen to be more comfortable voting sincerely if one party or candidate has such a commanding lead that the outcome of the election is a foregone conclusion. Political scientists have also sought to estimate the extent of tactical voting by comparing the choices voters make in mixed member district systems, which have become common throughout the world.
