Abstract
How do voters react to information about aggregate turnout? Do high turnout levels mobilize or discourage citizens to vote? We argue that it depends on individuals’ degree of conformity. We argue that in addition to the classic calculus of voting, conformist voters have an added incentive to ‘follow the pack’ and vote when turnout is high while abstain when turnout is low. We conduct two separate experiments, the first a survey experiment with a representative sample of the UK population and the second a lab experiment in Canada. Both studies confirm our hypothesis. These findings highlight the importance of taking individuals’ level of conformity into account when explaining their decision to vote or abstain.
Highlights
How do voters react to information about aggregate turnout? Are they more or less likely to vote when they are informed that turnout is high? The classic rational choice model (Downs 1957; Riker and Ordeshook 1968) has clear predictions in this regard: people should be more inclined to vote when presented with information that
Our research highlights the importance of including social conformity in the study of political phenomena
Recent research in political psychology has focused on the Big Five personality traits but our study suggests that we should go beyond these personality traits
Summary
We wish to fill the gap and measure the heterogeneous effect of information about turnout on subjects with different degrees of social conformity. In an ideal experimental design, we would manipulate social conformity and obtain causal estimates of its interaction effect with aggregate turnout on the probability of voting.
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