Determinants of Defection: The Effect of Elite Cues on Strategic Voting in a Mock MayoralElection.

Over 20,000 voters cast a ballot for Ralph Nader in the state of Florida in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, a number much larger than the vote differential between Al Gore and George W. Bush. After the election, some activists started a web site called RepententNaderVoter.com, to encourage others like them not cast a ?wasted vote? in the future. While there is a sizeable literature on strategic voting, few studies examine the factors that lead to successful coordination among minor party supporters when their first preference has no chance of winning and the race is close between the major party candidates. Some experimental studies examine election history, poll results, and campaign contributions as possible factors, though they do not look at the more explicit appeals often made by candidates, parties, and interest groups. This paper addresses this gap by using an experimental design which tests for the effects of different elite coordination cues on a pool of third party supporters. The primary hypothesis is that individuals will be more likely to vote strategically given exposure to an explicit coordination cue to abandon their first preference, as opposed to individuals only exposed to pre-election poll results. The experiment also tests for moderators of cues, including the presence of a counter message, the sponsor of the cue, and one?s level of political sophistication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]