OxTalks is Changing
OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Ballot Complexity and the Paradox of Choice : A Worldwide Analysis of List PR Systems with Preference Voting (1994-2024)
This contribution investigates how ballot complexity shapes vote concentration in preferential list PR systems – a growing electoral system used in over 30 democracies. These systems impose a dual cognitive burden on voters: choosing a party list and then selecting candidates within that list. Drawing on original data covering 158 elections across 28 countries (1994–2024), we test the effects of three electoral parameters: the number of candidates©, the number of preference votes allowed (PV), and the number of competing parties (N). We find that larger candidate choice© consistently increase vote concentration, confirming the « paradox of choice » hypothesis. Additionally, high party fragmentation (N) amplifies cognitive overload, reinforcing reliance on simple heuristics (primacy effect). However, systems allowing multiple PVs substantially mitigate this effect. These findings highlight key trade-offs for electoral engineers between voter empowerment, cognitive feasibility, and proportional representation, offering guidance for the design of democratic and competitive electoral systems.
Date:
19 June 2025, 14:00
Venue:
Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details:
Seminar Room A
Speaker:
Jeremy Dodeigne (University of Namur)
Organising department:
Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR)
Organiser:
Mihail Chiru (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
mihail.chiru@politics.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Mihail Chiru
