The Wasted Vote Thesis: West German Evidence

One reason often put forward for the lack of minor-party success single-member district/plurality electoral systems is that voters hesitate to waste their support on political parties that have little chance of winning. On this basis, a voter may cast his ballot for one of the major parties even though he prefers a certain minor party. A good illustration of this line of thought is provided by Anthony Downs his work, An Economic Theory of Democracy.l Downs claims that the American presidential election of 1948 some of the voters who preferred Henry Wallace and his Progressive party nevertheless voted for the Democratic candidate. They did so, says Downs, because they felt that Wallace had no chance at all, and that the more people who voted for him, the fewer who would Democratic. If the Democratic fell low enough, then the Republicans-the least desirable party from the Progressive viewpoint-would win. In sum, Downs argues that a for Wallace increased the probability that the party the Progressives favored least would win; and, to avoid this, some Wallace supporters voted for the candidate ranking second their preference ordering.2 The best known proponent of this vote thesis is Maurice Duverger. According to Duverger, in cases where there are three parties operating under the simple-majority, single-ballot system, the electors soon realize that their votes are wasted if they continue to give them to the third party; whence their natural tendency to transfer their to the less evil of its two adversaries order to prevent the success of the greater evil. 3