More disenfranchisement means more focus on rage bait / single issues that will rile up your side and juice your participation a little more (see ‘guns’, ‘pro-life’, ‘her emails’, et al). This pushes the parties to extreme opposites.
If you have compulsory voting, as suggested down thread, then that rump of casual voters dampens the extreme views and ends up pulling the parties towards the middle. Lots of “well there’s hardly any difference” swing voters. Parties do still end up competing on differences (‘gay marriage’, ‘immigration crack downs’) but extreme or patently false views are punished (‘jan 6 was a peaceful protest’).
The argument against compulsory voting is it slows ‘political innovation’ and drives a degree of apathy (‘there’s no difference between the bastards’). Minor parties and things like Preferential Voting can help address.
More disenfranchisement means more focus on rage bait / single issues that will rile up your side and juice your participation a little more (see ‘guns’, ‘pro-life’, ‘her emails’, et al). This pushes the parties to extreme opposites.
If you have compulsory voting, as suggested down thread, then that rump of casual voters dampens the extreme views and ends up pulling the parties towards the middle. Lots of “well there’s hardly any difference” swing voters. Parties do still end up competing on differences (‘gay marriage’, ‘immigration crack downs’) but extreme or patently false views are punished (‘jan 6 was a peaceful protest’).
The argument against compulsory voting is it slows ‘political innovation’ and drives a degree of apathy (‘there’s no difference between the bastards’). Minor parties and things like Preferential Voting can help address.