Polarization on policies and electoral turnout

In this paper, I focus on the relation between the electoral turnout and level of competition on several different policies (economic, environment, immigration). The assumption is that with higher polarization on policies and with higher saliency of policies, voters will have more incentives to vote. I provide the test of this hypothesis with multilevel model of voters in European countries included in Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) and European Social Survey (ESS). CHES data are the source of position on policies and therefore the base to calculation of polarization and saliency on policy. ESS provides useful set of individual data, which allows to control for individual factors shaping electoral turnout, in two years period. However, in the paper only 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014 waves are used because they are matching CHES data. Since I have data for several points in time, I can also describe how the change of polarization is related with change of electoral turnout.