Political Knowledge: The Missing link between Electoral Systems and Voter Turnout?

In advanced industrial societies, voter turnout tends to be higher under PR systems, but why this is the case remains unclear. In a recent article, Fisher et al (1) present a knowledge-based link, finding that electoral systems differently affect those with different levels of knowledge. But, they were unable “to unravel the puzzle” of “why are those with low levels of knowledge particularly discouraged from voting under plurality rule.” The question thus remains: why does political knowledge matter less under PR? They make it easier for the potential voters to locate themselves politically, i.e. to identify with a party and to use that identification as a guide through the complexities of issues and actors over time and at various levels of political activity. In this way PR fosters political knowledge and thus, potentially, electoral participation, especially at the lower end of the education and income ladders, where information about issues and actors is at a premium. In this paper I address this question by incorporating aggregate data into the analysis, applying the insight of Gordon and Segura (2) that “measures of political sophistication … are really products of both capabilities and decisions…., that lack of sophistication may be a product of the ... individual choices structured by those systems.” I try to show that because PR systems are more conducive to the formation and durability of programmatically coherent parties that operate throughout the country and at more than one level, they provide potential voters with a political map that is relatively clearly drawn and stable across time and space.