Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Group-based reasoning asserts that a voter will adopt the strategy that maximizes their payoff, assuming that this strategy will also be employed by all voters of their type. In this paper, we examine a general model involving multiple candidates and voter types, and we demonstrate that, in mandatory or costless elections, group-based voting remains resilient to pivotal considerations (i.e. the impulse to deviate from the strategy that maximizes the group’s payoffs in favor of one’s own payoff). This finding strengthens the connection between two important theories on voting behavior – group-based reasoning and individual utility maximization – and highlights that they do not always produce starkly different predictions.