Can Your Vote Be Bought?

     Ahead of midterm elections, President Trump has promised all U.S. adults $5,000 if republicans win the midterms, but does being paid $5,000 outweigh the costs of voting? For the sake of this analysis, I will be focusing only on the marginal benefit based on promises, not on the expected future utility stream under each candidate. We know that there is no financial promise being made by other parties running against Trump, so the marginal financial benefit of voting for Trump would be $5,000 for adults. Based on our discussion in class, we also know that the probability of being the decisive vote in Virginia is 1/10,000,000. Using these values, the expected benefit of voting for Trump purely based on the financial promises would be $0.0005, a number that is much lower than the marginal cost of voting. In a different state that historically votes blue, the probability of being the decisive voter is even lower, so the expected benefit is even lower. 
                 While President Trump’s promise seems like a large sum, the expected value for the individual is much lower than the perceived benefit of the offer. If Trump is trying to target people who typically would not vote, this low of an expected benefit might not bring them out to the polls. This number could be swayed, however, if people miscalculate the probability that their vote will be decisive, increasing the perceived value of the promise.
                 On the other hand, we know that people do not always behave predictably when it comes to voting. In terms of straying from the Rational Agent Model, people consistently vote even when the costs of voting exceed the expected benefits of voting. For example, they could have a strong sense of civic duty or be highly influenced by social pressure. In these cases, social pressure could play a major role, especially if people view the $5,000 incentive as being paid out. On a similar note, people who vote for civic duty might be insulted by the offering if they consider their vote something very important that cannot be bought out or they could see the offer as “undemocratic.”