We look at conceptual underpinnings of the idea of wasted votes and its relationship to political competition, strategic voting and non-Duvergerian equilibria. In the process we (a) offer an extension of Cox’s S/F ratio approach that we believe better captures wasted votes in voting situations where there is more than a single candidate to be elected and lopsided elections, (b) look at conceptual ambiguities in how wasted votes are to be measured, and propose a straightforward way to measure wasted votes in single- and multiseat contests, and (c) provide empirical evidence drawn from district level data in Spain and the U.K. on how our measures correlate with each other and with a measure of political competition and on how they can be used to provide improved insights into electoral dynamics resulting from Duvergerian effects.
