The Myth of the Irrational Voter

In 2007 Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University, published a fine book entitled ‘The Myth of the Rational Voter’. In it, he robustly questions the ability of the average voting citizen to make reasoned choices, especially in matters about the economy.

Nearly ten years later, on 24 June 2016, professor Caplan tweeted

It is widely accepted that RT ≠ endorsement, but the likes and retweets suggest that some people do think he has a point: voters are not rational. The context is, of course, the EU membership referendum that took place in the UK one day earlier. Contrary to most polls, the option to leave the EU gained a majority of the votes. And it is particularly those who voted Leave whose rationality has been doubted, for example in this Vox article, albeit not so much in the sense that Bryan Caplan addresses in his book, but rather on the basis that they might have voted out of deeply held emotional beliefs, subject to biases and unmediated by any reasoning about the likely economic consequences.

Is that really true?

Biases don’t necessarily mean irrationality