Party Strategy and Turnout Decline: Evidence from Chile

• In Event: Parties and Voters in Latin America

Abstract

In recent decades, turnout rates have declined in countries across the world (Blais and Rubenson 2013; Dalton 2008; Barnes and Rangel 2014; Blais, Gidengil, and Nevitte 2004). Many of these countries have seen simultaneous increases in income and education levels, factors thought to increase turnout (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980; Powell 1982). Why, then, has electoral participation fallen?

Existing explanations have attributed these declines to changes in citizens' attitudes towards elections. In young democracies, "founding elections" yield high levels of participation, but turnout drops as the stakes of elections fall and voters grow disillusioned with the promises of democracy (O'Donnell and Schmitter 1986). In advanced democracies, generational replacement has led to a decline in turnout, as younger generations have a different conception of civic duty (Dalton 2008).

I show that these behavioral explanations are insufficient to explain one of the starkest cases of turnout decline, a 36-point drop over just two decades in Chile. Using a combination of voter registration data, original survey data, and interviews with politicians and campaign managers, I examine the central role of party strategy in turnout decline. When electoral institutions, either through imposing stability on electoral outcomes or promoting intra-party competition, discourage or constrain parties from building strong brands, citizens' partisan attachments wane. In the absence of strong party identification, citizens withdraw from electoral politics and express greater antipathy towards political parties. Although citizens remain interested in politics, they become less likely to engage in party-centered forms of participation, such as supporting a party at the ballot boxes. This paper contributes to our understanding of the effects of electoral institutions on parties' campaign strategies, as well as recent trends in mass political behavior and identities.

Author

• Eli Gavin Rau, Yale University