“Uncovering the Micro-foundation of Turnout and Electoral systems” With Tse-hsin Chen.

Abstract

Building upon insights from spatial voting theories, this paper argues that a voter’s turnout propensity increases as the distance between her position and the policy position of her most favored party decreases.  On the flip side of the logic, a voter is more likely to turn out if the policy distance between her and her least favored party increases.  Utilizing survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems across over 30 recent elections, and controlling for a set of individual as well as contextual factors, we find strong empirical support for our claims.  We conclude our paper by discussing the implications of our findings for spatial voting models.