Figure 1: Marginal effects of education, income, gender and cohort (age) on the likelihood of wasting a vote in Germany, France and Great BritainNote: 95% confidence intervals based on a logistic regression of social characteristics on the likelihood to waste a vote. Individuals’ capacities to correctly asses the chances of candidates are hence not decisive for making their vote count in majoritarian elections. Income also has only a limited influence on vote wasting and we do not find solid evidence supporting a relationship between financial resources and (in-)effective voting. Women are much less likely than men to waste their vote, in particular if they sincerely prefer a minor party. Future research can build on this original work to study the motivation(s) to waste a vote more closely.