Voter costs shift political candidate positions and drive polarization
Costly Voting in the Hotelling-Downs Model
Computer Science and Game TheoryMultiagent Systems
Summary
When voting costs something, not everyone votes all the time. This changes how political candidates choose where to stand on issues. The usual idea that candidates meet in the middle to attract most voters doesn’t hold up. The authors show that how willing people are to vote based on cost affects how polarized candidates become. They also add factors like feeling disconnected or competition between candidates and find their main conclusions still hold.
What this means in practice
- •For political campaign strategists: Design campaign messages that consider voters’ costs to vote and predict candidate position shifts due to voter turnout changes.
- •For policy analysts: Evaluate electoral reforms by modeling how voting costs influence political polarization and voter engagement.
Tested on simulated data.
Authors
Guy Wolf, Reshef Meir
Abstract
We study a partial-participation variation of the Hotelling-Downs model. Voters each have a cost to vote, and only vote when the comparative gain from their preferred candidate exceeds the cost. Under this model the median voter theorem breaks, and we study the extent of polarization under equilibria in different voters and cost distributions. We find that the main predictor of polarization is the reverse-hazard-rate of the cost distribution, indicating that the driver of polarization under our model is the willingness of voters to respond to changes in positions of candidates. We then extend the model by adding parameters governing alienation and candidate competitiveness, showing that our results are robust even when taking into account other realistic factors.