Electoral System, Political Knowledge and Voter Turnout— Complex Liaisons
Electoral System, Political Knowledge and Voter Turnout— Complex Liaisons

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact of the electoral system on turnout, moderated by politicalknowledge. Following the introduction of the FPTP system to some city councils in the 2014 elections, weused a quasi-experimental design to compare two sets of economically, socially and culturally similar cities, chosenusing the Propensity Score Matching method. Data from two waves of a survey with residents, city councillorsand local social leaders after the 2014 local elections showed that, despite widespread public debates, knowledgeabout the electoral system was very low. The results proved that, although the level of political knowledge washigher in the FPTP system than in the PR system, the turnout in the former was lower, even when controlled bypolitical knowledge. However, the joint impact of the electoral system and political knowledge on turnout wasmixed, and depended on the method of measuring political knowledge

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