“Don’t Just Stand There: Do Something!” Empirical Evidence for Policy Preferences that Violate Single-Peakedness with Implications for Social Choice Patrick Egan New York University

Question: Under what conditions are policy preferences truly “single-peaked?” Design: Ask respondents to rank their preferences over policies on four issues: –Education –The U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay –Illegal immigration –The nation’s reliance on foreign oil For each policy, respondents ranked preferences over the status quo (Q) and alternatives to its right (R) and left (L). Question and Design

Issue Single-peaked preferencesNon-single-peaked preferences Totals L>Q>RL>Q>RR>Q>LR>Q>LQ>R>LQ>R>LQ>L>RQ>L>RL>R>QL>R>QR>L>QR>L>Q % with non- single- peaked preferences Immigration Foreign Oil Guantanamo Education Results: ranked preferences

Results: pairwise votes derived from rankings Issue L vs RL vs QR vs Q % L% R% L% Q% R% Q Immigration Foreign Oil Guantanamo Education Both L and R are preferred to Q Q is preferred to both L and R Cycling occurs Only issue on which aggregate ranked preferences correspond to aggregate marginals

Hypothesis: a heightened sense of the problem leads people to abandon a moderate status quo –Challenge: assessments of problem seriousness are endogenous to policy preferences Experiment: randomly expose subjects to a reading passage and image that makes the problem more salient –The treatment exogenously raises subjects’ assessment of problem seriousness on the issue. Result: On issues where the treatment successfully raised problem seriousness, the share of voters ranking the status quo last rose significantly. Identifying a mechanism