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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Why Does Voting Get So Complicated? : A Review Of Theories For Analyzing Democratic Participation., Jeff Gill, Jason Gainous
Why Does Voting Get So Complicated? : A Review Of Theories For Analyzing Democratic Participation., Jeff Gill, Jason Gainous
Jason Gainous
The purpose of this article is to present a sample from the panoply of formal theories on voting and elections to Statistical Science readers who have had limited exposure to such work. These abstract ideas provide a framework for understanding the context of the empirical articles that follow in this volume. The primary focus of this theoretical literature is on the use of mathematical formalism to describe electoral systems and outcomes by modeling both voting rules and human behavior. As with empirical models, these constructs are never perfect descriptors of reality, but instead form the basis for understanding fundamental characteristics …