Political Competition, Incumbent's Quality and Voter Turnout: Implications for Electoral Participation Enhancement

Abstract

After understanding of the challenger quality, the next step is to explain the influence of incumbent's quality. This research hypothesizes that the incumbent's quality influences the level of political competition across districts and consequently affects voter turnout. Filling this gap this essay is in line with the importance of district level analysis, because the basic unit for political competition is the individual local district. However, this essay found no statistical significance of an incumbent candidate's quality in explaining voter turnout. Furthermore, the incumbent candidate's quality seems to lower electorate's interest in election since it renders his or her district as ‘safe seats.’ This study confirms previous understanding of the difference between the SMSP and PR electoral systems in terms of voter turnout. Therefore, changing electoral systems into PR is one of the possible options to consider for the purpose of increasing voter turnout.