Voting By Altruists : Some Electoral Implications of Civic Virtue

This paper examines some neglected implications of altruism in deterministic voting models in settings where voters differ in their altruistic propensities. Of particular interest is the extent to which relatively small groups of altruistic voters can affect electoral outcomes by simply casting votes. Ordinarily, in deterministic electoral models one expects small groups with quot;oddquot; policy preferences to have little impact on electoral outcomes. This paper demonstrates that relatively small groups of altruistic voters can have substantial effects on policies entirely determined by median voter preferences