Voting Costs and Voter Turnout in Competitive Elections
27 Pages Posted: 19 Jul 2010 Last revised: 1 Sep 2010
Date Written: 2010
Abstract
How different are voters in competitive elections from voters in uncompetitive elections? If voters in competitive elections are treated differently by politicians, if they respond to different stimuli, and if their voting calculus is different, then how much can we learn from studies that ignore the heterogeneity of effects by electoral context? This paper suggests that as elections become more competitive fewer voters are on the fence about their decision to vote or abstain. One consequence of this is that small changes to the voting calculus will not affect turnout in competitive elections. After developing the theory, we turn to a voting cost that is randomly assigned and exogenous to politics - Election Day rain storms. We find that this small cost impacts turnout rates only in elections that are not competitive. The implication of this work is that few inferences can be made about voting behavior in close elections from research conducted using uncompetitive elections alone.
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