Master Thesis Defense: Faruk Aksoy

AN APPLICATION OF PROSPECT THEORY ON ANALYSIS OF STRATEGIC 

VOTING: THE EFFECT OF INCUMBENCY ON REFERENCE POINT

Masters of Political Science, 2015

Date&Time: August 5th, 2015 - 10:00

FASS 2034

Özge Kemahlıoğlu(Thesis Supervisor), Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Erdem Aytaç , Emre Hatipoğlu(Substitute Jury)

Abstract

Prospect theory is one of the most influential decision making theories in social 

sciences. However, it has been ignored by literature of strategic voting in which 

expected utility theory is widely preferred. In this study, I apply two claims of prospect 

theory, reference point dependency and loss aversion, on the analysis of strategic 

voting. The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of voter’s reference point 

on the possibility that voter casts strategic vote in election. Hypotheses are derived from 

a formal model which incorporates reference point and loss aversion into analysis of 

strategic voting. The model predicts that voters, whose most preferred party or 

candidate is incumbent, are more prone to vote strategically than voters, whose least 

preferred party or candidate is incumbent. In addition to this, when the place of 

incumbent in preference ranking of the voter in which, voter rank the parties/candidates 

in order of preference, increases; possibility of strategic voting increases as well. To test 

these predictions, experiments were conducted with student and farmer subjects. Also, 

statistical analyses were done with using survey data from the 2015 British Electoral 

Studies (BES) for 2010 and 2015 UK General Elections. Results from experiments and 

statistical analyses provide support for predictions of this study.