Ties

We tackle the question of the role of pivotality in voter turnout decisions by testing for the first time whether the occurrence of a tied election generates information spillovers onto nearby localities' subsequent elections. First, we develop a model where voters update their beliefs regarding the probability of their vote being decisive upon observing earlier elections' outcomes. Next, by exploiting Italian mayoral elections ending in close outcomes during the past two decades and the quasi-experimental conditions created by the staggered electoral calendar, we find a substantial impact on voter turnout rates of exposure to spillovers from tied elections.