Exploring voter turnout dynamics in polarized elections: A group-rule utilitarian framework

Abstract

Do differentiated policies encourage higher voter turnout than centrist policies? This paper uses the citizen-candidate model and group-based utilitarian approach of costly voting to study how political polarization affects voter turnout under positive voting costs. Two parties enter the electoral competition with a pre-commitment on the platforms, and the winner implements their ideal policy. Comparative statistics results demonstrate that under positive voting costs, the expected turnout is always positive in the presence of political polarization and is only zero when the policies converge. In addition, the expected turnout rises with increased polarization and decreases with voting costs. This study exhaustively demonstrates that positive voter turnout is feasible only when policy differentiation exists.