Voting when the stakes are high
Journal article, Peer reviewed

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Date
2014Metadata
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- Scientific articles [2147]
Abstract
Most theories of voter behavior predict that electoral participation will be higher in elections where more is at stake. We test this prediction by studying how participation is affected by exogenous variation in local governments' financial flexibility to provide pork for their voters.Utilizing simultaneous elections for different offices, we identify a positive effect of election stakes on participation: Higher stakes at the local level increase participation at the local relative to the regional election. Survey evidence indicates that the underlying mechanism relates to citizens' acquisition of information.
Description
This is the authors’ accepted and refereed manuscript to the article. Publisher's version is available at www.elsevier.com