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In French parliamentary and local elections, candidates ranked first and second in the first round automatically qualify for the second round, while a third qualifies only when selected by more than 12.5 percent of the registered citizens. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design around this threshold, we find that the third candidate attracts both “loyal” voters, who would have abstained or cast a blank or null vote if she were not present, and “switchers”, who would otherwise have voted for the top two candidates. Switchers vote for the third candidate even when she is very unlikely to win the election. This disproportionately harms the candidate ideologically closest to the third, and changes the winner in one fifth of the races, causing the loss of the Condorcet winner. These results suggest that a large fraction of voters value voting expressively over behaving strategically to ensure the victory of their second best. We rationalize our findings by a model in which voters trade off expressive and strategic motives.
