Platform Competition with Voting Costs
P2-5
Presented by: Greg Sasso
How do changes in voting costs affect vote shares, platform choice, and polarization? To answer these questions, we analyze a standard spatial model of elections with two key modifications: There are two distinct groups of voters, and these groups have different costs of voting. We find that as voting costs increase for one group, the party favored by the other group chooses more extreme platforms. However, the probability of one group winning or their vote share does not necessarily change as costs change.