Low Voter Turnout Results in Platform Stagnation

We have discussed Johnson’s paper “Voting, Rational Abstention, and Rational Ignorance” in class which argues that it is rational for people to abstain from voting because an individual’s single vote has little probability of affecting the outcome of any election. Johnson also pointed out that a large portion of the American population do not vote. This New Yorker article describes non-voters as typically younger, less educated, and of lower income brackets which aligns with Johnson’s descriptions. The New Yorker article furthers that non-voters have “roughly the same view of the Democrats.”

If non-voters decided to vote, electoral races would be swept by the Democrats. The public’s assumption that America is more or less evenly split between Democrat and Republican values is an incorrect reflection of reality. Johnson clarifies this as a problem when he notes that non-voters’ preferences are not reflected in the outcome which “is difficult to interpret as consent of the governed.”

The incorrect belief that the public is evenly split between Democratic and Republican values is one of the most dangerous implications of rational abstention. If every American voted, more Democrats would be elected than Republicans due to the non-voters’ liberal preferences. That in turn would cause the Republican Party and its candidates to change their platform so that they could win elections because, as Downs pointed out, candidates change their platform to win elections. Altering party platforms is part of the natural evolution of politics. However, if the non-voter trend increases, we risk platform stagnation. As voter turnout decreases, our candidates and parties increasingly do not represent contemporary American values.