STRATEGIC VOTING EQUILIBRIA UNDER THE SINGLE NONTRANSFERABLE VOTE

Previous investigations of strategic voting equilibria in mass elector ates have looked only at single-member districts. I shall investigate such equilibria in multimember districts operating under the single no ntransferable vote system. What appear to be the most natural equilibr ia conform to the M + 1 rule, according to which strategic voting in M -seat districts produces exactly M + 1 vote-getting candidates in equi librium, any others having their support totally undercut. This result provides the beginnings of a formal underpinning for Reed's recent ex tension of Duverger's Law to the Japanese case. The model also generat es specific and empirically testable hypotheses concerning the excepti ons to the M + 1 rule that one ought to expect in equilibrium. I test these hypotheses with Japanese data. Finally, the model also reveals a type of strategic voting that is specific to multimember districts. I use Japanese data again to explore the empirical importance of this k ind of strategic voting.