Voter Preferences, Local Party Competitiveness, Turnout, and Strategic Voting: Deterrents to Voting are Unequally Distributed

05 November 2020, Version 1
This content is an early or alternative research output and has not been peer-reviewed at the time of posting.

Abstract

Voters are deterred from casting a vote and more likely to vote strategically if their preferred choice is less competitive in the electoral district. We use 2019 Canadian Election Study data and find that respondents' answers to a 'How Likely are you to Vote' question depends on their estimate of their preferred party's local chances of winning, relative to other parties. This deterrent effect on turnout from the competitiveness of  voter's preferred party is concentrated among certain parties (NDP, Green, People's Party of Canada), meaning that voters with particular policy perspectives are systematically deterred from voting, relative to other voters. Furthermore, we find that strategic voting is also heavily concentrated among voters who prefer parties outside the nationally most competitive two parties.

Keywords

electoral systems
turnout
first past the post
voting behaviour
participation
Canada

Comments

Comments are not moderated before they are posted, but they can be removed by the site moderators if they are found to be in contravention of our Commenting Policy [opens in a new tab] - please read this policy before you post. Comments should be used for scholarly discussion of the content in question. You can find more information about how to use the commenting feature here [opens in a new tab] .
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy [opens in a new tab] and Terms of Service [opens in a new tab] apply.