Towards a Polarised Electorate? How Polarisation Affects Turnout Decisions in the Belgian Context of Compulsory Voting

ÉDITION

Eleven

COLLECTION

Politics of the Low Countries

LIEN

Eleven journals

Introduction

Research on political behaviour gives enormous attention to the question of what compels citizens to turn out to vote in democratic elections (Blais, 2006; Blais & Carty, 1990; Blais & Dobrzynska, 1998; Crepaz, 1990; Frank & Martínez i Coma, 2023; Jackman, 1987; Jackman & Miller, 1995; Kostelka & Blais, 2021; Radcliff, 1992; Radcliff & Davis, 2000). This focus is largely grounded in normative concerns. Since elections are so instrumental for democracy by giving citizens a key instrument to influence policies and to find representation, it is of vital importance that turnout is high (Lijphart, 1997; Powell, 1982). Sufficiently high turnout is the condition for elections to produce governments that are representative of the people (Dahl, 1971; Pitkin, 1967).

Two of the most consistent determinants of voter turnout are polarisation and compulsory voting regulations (Birch, 2009; Kostelka et al., 2022; Singh, 2021). Polarisation drives voter turnout in two ways; either because ideological polarisation increases the utility of voting (Dalton, 2008; Downs, 1957; Ellger, 2023; Stokes, 1963) or because affective polarisation strengthens the emotional value that is attached to the outcome of the election (Harteveld & Wagner, 2022; Phillips, 2024; Serani, 2022; Ward & Tavits, 2019). Compulsory voting, meanwhile, drives turnout because it requires citizens by law to vote in an election (Birch, 2009; Dassonneville et al., 2023; Kostelka et al., 2022). Yet, we know little about how these two interact. That is, studies that examine the role of polarisation in stimulating turnout often exclude compulsory voting countries (Ellger, 2023; Wessels & Schmitt, 2008). This is problematic, because the context of compulsory voting can influence political behaviour (Dassonneville et al., 2019; Singh, 2023), and it is often suggested to stimulate a civic duty to vote (Chapman, 2019; Feitosa et al., 2020; Quintelier et al., 2011). The impact of polarisation on the motivation to vote among such an electorate might therefore be seriously suppressed.

Yet, testing the polarisation-turnout mechanism in a context of compulsory voting is challenging, as both the polarised and the non-polarised voters are required to vote. Making a meaningful distinction between their turnout behaviours is therefore complicated. In this article, we aim to overcome this issue. Relying on the Belgian case, we employ a survey question that asks respondents to what extent they would still be willing to cast a vote in a hypothetical future scenario where compulsory voting is lifted. Accordingly, we examine whether polarisation – both ideological and affective – has a positive impact on this voluntary voting intention. This allows us to detect whether polarisation is also a driving force of turnout in a compulsory voting system and offers some short-term insights about a potential ‘polarisation participation gap’ in case compulsory voting would actually be replaced by voluntary voting.

We test our argument relying on data from Belgian national election studies of the past three decades (1991-2019), and we analyse the two regions of Flanders and Wallonia separately.
We find that turnout attitudes are similar across both linguistic regions and remain remarkably stable across time. Both ideological polarisation and affective polarisation are indeed positively associated with the willingness to vote, but ideological polarisation is not consistently statistically significant. Affective polarisation, on the other hand, significantly contributes to turnout in almost all elections under study. In what follows, we first review the literature on polarisation and compulsory voting, from which we derive our set of hypotheses. We then describe our case, data and methods and present the results. We conclude with some implications of our findings.


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