Strategic voting revisited: the case of the 2018 Taipei City mayoral election

Abstract In this study, we examine whether strategic voting – in which a voter seeks to maximize the expected payoff from casting a ballot – occurred among late voters in the 2018 Taipei City mayoral election. This multi-candidate mayoral contest was noteworthy because ballot-counting started before all the votes had been cast, with preliminary results being leaked to the media. Theoretically, having access to real-time updates of voting figures could have influenced the decision of voters who were still in line waiting to cast their ballots. Analysis and reconstruction of aggregate polling data, however, demonstrate that there was very little (if any) strategic voting among these late voters on election day, even if they had information that might have induced them to vote strategically.