Voter Response to Iterated Poll Information
Annemieke Reijngoud

Abstract:
We develop a formal model of opinion polls in elections and study how
they influence voting behaviour, and thereby elections outcomes. We
analyse two settings. In the first, we study a voter's incentives to
misrepresent her preferences after receiving poll information. We vary
the amount of information a poll provides and examine, for different
voting procedures, when a voter starts and stops having these
incentives. In the second setting, voters repeatedly update their
ballot in view of a sequence of polls, and we analyse the effect of
this process on the election outcome using both analytical and
experimental methods.  We consider several ways in which a voter may
respond to poll information, and for different combinations of these
response policies we study how opinion polls affect the properties of
different voting procedures. Together, our results clarify under which
circumstances opinion polls can improve the quality of election
outcomes and under which circumstances they can have negative effects,
due to the increased opportunities for strategic voting they provide.