What is the paradox of voting in simple terms?

Your single vote almost never changes an election's outcome, so on paper the time and effort of voting isn't worth it. Yet lots of people vote anyway, and that's the puzzle.

Is it the same as Condorcet's paradox?

No. Condorcet's paradox is a social choice problem showing that majority rule can produce cyclical group preferences. The paradox of voting is about why people turn out to vote at all.

Paradox of Voting

🏛️ Politics & Public Administration By CampusDown Wiki Editorial Team Last updated October 27, 2026

The paradox of voting is the puzzle that, from a rational choice perspective, the chance that a single vote decides an election is close to zero, so the cost of voting outweighs its expected benefit and rational citizens should abstain, yet millions of people vote. Anthony Downs systematized it in An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957), and it is widely seen as a key test of the rational choice approach. It is distinct from Condorcet's paradox in social choice theory.

Contents

1. Downs's calculus and the paradox
2. Theoretical responses
3. Altruistic voting and the evidence
4. FAQ
5. References

Downs's calculus and the paradox

Downs (1957) held that voters weigh the expected benefits of voting against its costs. The expected benefit is the gain from a preferred candidate winning multiplied by the probability that one's own vote changes the outcome, and in an election with millions of participants that probability is tiny. The time spent getting to the polls and gathering information, on the other hand, is a certain cost, so by this calculus a rational voter should abstain. Tullock (1967) stressed the same logic. It shares its structure with the free rider problem in contributions to public goods, and because it fails to explain high turnout it has been cited as a weakness of rational choice theory. Green and Shapiro (1994) criticized it as a signature pathology of the rational choice approach.

Theoretical responses

Riker and Ordeshook (1968) added a D term to the voting calculus representing a sense of civic duty or the satisfaction of affirming democracy, explaining participation through utility derived from the act of voting itself. Critics countered that this builds the result into the assumptions. Ferejohn and Fiorina (1974) proposed a minimax regret criterion under which voters who cannot estimate probabilities, and who seek to minimize their maximum regret, may vote. Ledyard (1984) and Palfrey and Rosenthal (1985) built game-theoretic models in which voters take others' participation into account. If everyone abstains, a single vote gains influence, so some participation is an equilibrium, but with voting costs equilibrium turnout in large elections still comes out low. Feddersen (2004) reviewed the debate from the perspective of rule-based behavior by groups.

Altruistic voting and the evidence

Edlin, Gelman and Kaplan (2007) argued that if voters care about society's welfare and not just their own, voting can be rational even though the chance of being decisive is small, because the stakes grow with the number of people affected. Gelman, Silver and Edlin (2012) estimated that in the 2008 US presidential election the chance that one vote would change the result averaged roughly 1 in 60 million, but was much higher in swing states. Blais (2000) used surveys of Canadian voters to show that a sense of duty is a central motive for voting, and in a large field experiment by Gerber, Green and Larimer (2008), a mailer telling people their neighbors would learn whether they voted raised turnout by about 8 percentage points. This shows that social norms are an important driver of voting. Mueller (2003) placed the debate at the heart of public choice theory.

FAQ

What is the paradox of voting in simple terms?: Your single vote almost never changes an election's outcome, so on paper the time and effort of voting isn't worth it. Yet lots of people vote anyway, and that's the puzzle.
Is it the same as Condorcet's paradox?: No. Condorcet's paradox is a social choice problem showing that majority rule can produce cyclical group preferences. The paradox of voting is about why people turn out to vote at all.

Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26

References

Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper & Row.
Tullock, G. (1967). Toward a Mathematics of Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Riker, W. H., & Ordeshook, P. C. (1968). A theory of the calculus of voting. American Political Science Review, 62(1), 25–42.
Ferejohn, J. A., & Fiorina, M. P. (1974). The paradox of not voting: A decision theoretic analysis. American Political Science Review, 68(2), 525–536.
Ledyard, J. O. (1984). The pure theory of large two-candidate elections. Public Choice, 44(1), 7–41.
Palfrey, T. R., & Rosenthal, H. (1985). Voter participation and strategic uncertainty. American Political Science Review, 79(1), 62–78.
Green, D. P., & Shapiro, I. (1994). Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Gelman, A., Silver, N., & Edlin, A. (2012). What is the probability your vote will make a difference? Economic Inquiry, 50(2), 321–326.
Edlin, A., Gelman, A., & Kaplan, N. (2007). Voting as a rational choice: Why and how people vote to improve the well-being of others. Rationality and Society, 19(3), 293–314.
Feddersen, T. J. (2004). Rational choice theory and the paradox of not voting. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(1), 99–112.
Gerber, A. S., Green, D. P., & Larimer, C. W. (2008). Social pressure and voter turnout: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment. American Political Science Review, 102(1), 33–48.
Blais, A. (2000). To Vote or Not to Vote? The Merits and Limits of Rational Choice Theory. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Mueller, D. C. (2003). Public Choice III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reports and materials that use this theory (Korean)

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This article was last updated on October 27, 2026. It is based on widely recognized original works and textbooks; when citing it in a paper, please check the original sources listed in the references.