Do people vote to settle differences? social diversity and electoral participation and competition in the Philippines
Date
2016-12
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Abstract
Literature on public choice seeks to determine what makes people vote. By establishing that voters are rational and elections are multi-dimensional, we argue that social cleavages and differences in individual characteristics influence
voter turnout and electoral competition. We explore how several social diversity factors (demo-graphical differences) influence electoral participation and electoral competition in the Philippines. By treating the current data as pooled
cross-sectional and panel, we estimate voter turnout and vote shares of winning candidates across the different provinces in the Philippines for the years 2001 and 2010, and we find that, together, different social diversity measures have
varying significant effects to electoral outcomes, although no consistency is observed.