Turnout in concurrent elections: Evidence from two quasi-experiments in Italy

Closeness and Turnout in Runoff Elections

This study aims at contributing to the literature on the effect of political competition on voting turnout. I test the Downsian Closeness Hypothesis (DCH) using data on runoffs elections in Hungary. This research design allows for estimating the effect of expected closeness using the variation of margins in the first round races to avoid the endogeneity problem inherent in ex post measures of c...

Re-examining Voter Turnout in Large Elections∗

A well-known shortcoming of rational voter models is that the equilibrium probability that an individual votes converges to zero as the population of citizens tends to infinity. We show that this does not – as is often suggested – imply that equilibrium voter turnout is insignificant in the limit. We characterize limiting equilibrium turnout and show that it may actually be arbitrarily large. I...

Learning in Elections and Voter Turnout

Voter turnout in game theoretic models of voting has typically been difficult to predict because of the problem of multiple Nash equilibria. Many of these equilibria require an extreme precision of beliefs among voters that is unlikely to be reached in real elections. At the same time, mechanisms like pre-election polls exist to shape the beliefs of voters about expected turnout. We combine the...

Coordination and turnout in large elections

Competitive elections are frequently decided by which side can generate larger turnout on polling day. When decided on whether to turnout voters are assumed to balance the cost of going to the polls with the prospect of making a difference in the election outcome. We present a stochastic model of turnout where voters receive information about current turnout propensities of the voting populus t...

Does Nota Affect Voter Turnout? Evidence from State Legislative Elections in India