Strategic Voting at the Romanian 2008 Local Elections

Abstract

The aim of this article is to measure the extent to which voters cast their ballots strategically at the Romanian 2008
local elections. Our interest was prompted by the introduction of a mixed-member electoral system for local elections. One
common characteristic of mixed-member electoral systems is that they present the voter with the opportunity for strategic
behavior. For the purpose of measuring strategic voting we use three methods: 1. we compare the number of votes received by
candidates in the single member district race with the number of votes received by their parties in the proportional representation
race; 2. we calculate the difference between the votes received by the two best ranked candidates to determine whether the race
between the two was tight, which would stimulate strategic behavior; 3. we calculate the second-first ratio (SF-ratio) proposed by
Gary Cox. Our results show that that only a small percentage of the voters behaved strategically although the newly introduced
mixed-member electoral system presents them with the opportunity to do so.