The Effects of Compulsory Voting on Political Parties

Abstract

Chapter 7 test the expectations about compulsory voting’s effects on political parties. Analyses shown in the first part of the chapter leverage data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the original survey data from Argentina. The results are somewhat perfunctory but suggest that parties may expend less effort mobilizing turnout under strict obligatory voting, especially of ideological moderates. The latter portion of the chapter presents multilevel analyses of data from the Comparative Manifestos Project. As anticipated in Chapter 6, it finds that mainstream parties de-emphasize ideologically salient issues in order to moderate their stances under enforced compulsory voting. It also finds some evidence that, as predicted, non-mainstream parties take more extreme positions where voters are compelled to the polls.