Strategic voting and personality traits

Abstract

Whilst previous work on strategic voting emphasizes a number of factors with respect to voting rules and structural issues in the electoral process there is limited research with respect to its individual determinants. We offer a novel approach to that end and employ an experiment to examine how Big Five personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability) influence one’s propensity to cast a vote tactically in PR elections with a threshold. Our findings show that openness to experience promotes greater likelihood of strategic voting whereas agreeableness decreases that probability.