How much does a vote matter? (Article)

80,000 Hours Podcast

If you care about social impact, is voting important? In this piece, Rob investigates the two key things that determine the impact of your vote:

1. The chances of your vote changing an election’s outcome.
2. How much better some candidates are for the world as a whole, compared to others.

He then discusses a couple of the best arguments against voting in important elections, namely:

1. If an election is competitive, that means other people disagree about which option is better, and you’re at some risk of voting for the worse candidate by mistake.
2. While voting itself doesn’t take long, knowing enough to accurately pick which candidate is better for the world actually does take substantial effort — effort that could be better allocated elsewhere.

Finally, Rob covers the impact of donating to campaigns or working to "get out the vote," which can be effective ways to generate additional votes for your preferred candidate.

We last released this article in October 2020, but we think it largely still stands up today.

Chapters:

• Rob's intro (00:00:00)
• Introduction (00:01:12)
• What's coming up (00:02:35)
• The probability of one vote changing an election (00:03:58)
• How much does it matter who wins? (00:09:29)
• What if you’re wrong? (00:16:38)
• Is deciding how to vote too much effort? (00:21:47)
• How much does it cost to drive one extra vote? (00:25:13)
• Overall, is it altruistic to vote? (00:29:38)
• Rob's outro (00:31:19)

Producer: Keiran Harris