The 2016 Republican nomination contest has, by virtually all accounts, been unique. One prominent feature has been pundits’ inability to understand Donald Trump’s persistent support, despite many “non-presidential” words and advocacy of policies (e.g., eminent domain abuse and protectionism, which could easily lead to trade wars) that are likely to harm his supporters.
The confusion may be that commentators are channeling the traditional view that voting is instrumental — an effort to achieve policies whose effects will best advance one’s interests. But that view fails to confront the fact that, unlike in markets, where one’s choices determine results, one’s vote in any large-numbers election is extremely unlikely to affect the results.
Say there was a one-in-a-million chance that your vote would swing an electoral outcome (a wildly optimistic thought in many cases) to a result benefiting you by $10,000. Viewed instrumentally — solely as a means to an improved end — the expected value of that vote is one cent ($10,000 divided by 1 million). Such a small payoff cannot explain choosing to vote, much less adamant support for a particular candidate.
Voting As a Means of Emotional Expression
However, people often also care about the expressive value of voting — what a vote says about the voter. Perhaps best expressed by Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky’s classic Democracy and Decision, it reflects the fact that, beyond voters’ instrumental incentives, they might also want to vote for something because it makes them feel better, particularly by embellishing a noble self-characterization. For instance, a vote could validate one’s sense of self-worth by illustrating that “I care,” “I am patriotic,” “I am not a racist,” etc.
Candidates typically try to align instrumental reasons to vote for them with expressive reasons — claiming that their policies will be good for voters as well as demonstrating those voters’ goodness. For instance, protectionism is sold as good for voters (though it can only be good for some at even larger costs to others) and a demonstration that voters are patriotic. But of greater interest is when the self-interest and self-image effects conflict, because that can generate the paradoxical consequence of making it in a voter’s self-interest to vote against their apparent self-interest.
Consider one of the “1%,” faced with a vote on whether to raise taxes on “the rich.” Beyond the fact that the already rich are not the same as those who would be more heavily taxed because they earn high incomes in subsequent years and that the rich are frequently already tax-sheltered against such burdens, it can be in his interest to vote for higher taxes to be imposed on himself, even if it would actually accomplish no good. Say, as above, there is a one-in-a-million chance that his vote will change the electoral outcome. The expected cost of voting to raise his own taxes by $10,000 is one cent. Therefore, if the value of demonstrating his generosity to himself and/or others by voting for the proposition exceeded one cent, such a voter would benefit by voting against his instrumental self-interest.
Voting Compared to Market Choices
Contrast that with the case where your vote is decisive — in market choices. Many people who would be willing to bear a one cent cost to vote to demonstrate their $10,000 imaginary generosity via the electoral process would not be willing to actually donate $10,000 of their own money for the same end.
An important consequence is that for votes with sizeable “send-a-message” implications for themselves, voters may frequently vote for policies and candidates that would harm their interests, because in contrast to market behavior, voting makes such a choice artificially cheap. In voting, I must only give up an infinitesimal chance of altering a political outcome in order to achieve the full value of expressive voting, making the cost to me virtually zero, when I would have to actually bear the full cost for such an expressive value if I made the same choice with my own resources through voluntary arrangements.
While the most common expressive voting motif is one where people burnish their haloes by voting against their narrow self-interest, that is not the only possibility. That is where Donald Trump seems to enter the picture.
A key to understanding this is a description I heard of Trump supporters as primarily flipping a giant middle finger to their party elite. People who feel they have been lied to and let down by leaders who promised the moon and didn’t even deliver a moon rock could easily be angry enough that echoing Network’s Howard Beale’s “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” makes them feel better about “standing up for themselves.”
That angry expressive value embodied by Trump (though with the rhetorical cover that you are really voting to “Make America Great Again,” not to vent your spleen) could often exceed any foregone instrumental value from such a vote. That can explain both much of Trump’s support and why his far-from-presidential demeanor and substantial stream of “sins” (that he has never needed to ask forgiveness for) that would be disqualifying for any other politician has made little dent in it. The low probability of one vote affecting the outcome means that for a venting voter to support Trump is virtually costless to them. And when one’s revenge may even “blow up the party,” what would be a huge negative to others becomes another positive aspect of “I’ll show them” expressive voting.
Expressive voting can go a long way to solve the riddle of Donald Trump’s persistent support. But it presents another riddle: why should people trust important decisions to government because democracy “represents what we want?” Not only does it move choices to people who know individuals and their circumstances less well and care less about them than they do themselves, those individuals as voters often support what is against their interests because the electoral distortion makes it artificially cheap. It would seem that the less we rely on such fun-house mirror reflections of our interests, and the more we make our own choices with our own resources, the better off we would be.
