Politicians Lie Because Voters Lie: A Problem with 'Tactical Voting'

Abstract

We construct a basic game based around a majoritarian electoral rule that illustrates a problem with ‘tactical voting’: that is, when voters have incentive to misreport their preferences, politicians/candidates have a corresponding incentive to misreport/lie about their own positions and, thus, if politicians implement outcomes in public office that differ from their stated positions, voters may actually end up being worse off if they ‘tactically vote’ (i.e by misreporting their true preferences) relative to the Nash equilibrium outcome when politicians cannot lie but voters can. In this model, cyclicality in truth and deceit emerges amongst the politicians/candidates and it is found that the source of dishonesty in politics is systemic (i.e it is ultimately the fault of the electoral rule and voting system) because of the systemic incentive for both politicians and voters to lie.