Rejection-based choices discourage people from opting out of voting

Representing the will of voters is challenging when many opt out of indicating their preferences. Such opt-out behavior has been explained by voters lacking a preference and/or disliking their options. We provide evidence for a third account: people opt out of choosing between undesirable candidates because bad options are incongruent with their typical goal of selecting the best one. Using a voting task, we show across two lab-based studies that the tendency to opt out of choices between bad candidates is eliminated when participants are asked to reject the worst candidate. Leveraging our experimental findings, we simulate elections and show that rejection-based voting can produce election outcomes that are more representative of the preferences of the electorate. To validate this prediction, we conduct two Prolific surveys of self-reported US Independents before the 2024 US presidential election, and show that people are less likely to respond "undecided" when asked who they will vote against rather than who they will vote for. Our findings help understand when and how people vote, and how to better reveal the preferences of voters who know which candidates they like least but are unwilling to endorse the one they like most.