Politicians as utility maximizing agents: Public choice and the British National Election of 1945

Public choice theory describes politicians as expected utility maximizing agents who are primarily concerned with their own election prospects. In a fashion similar to Anderson and Tollison, who showed that US President Abraham Lincoln manipulated the military vote in the US Presidential election of 1864, this note presents historical accounts of Winston Churchill’s efforts (desire) to suppress the overall military vote in the British National Election of 1945. The anecdotal evidence and election simulations presented suggest that Churchill’s expected utility maximization suppression strategy was consistent with public choice tenets. As such, the public choice interpretation of British political history presented here adds further to political‐economic models of legislator/executive behavior.