Replication Data for: "The Drowning-out Effect: Voter Turnout and Protests"

This paper presents a game-theoretic model and demonstrates that this intuition does not necessarily hold. With large voting costs, only people of intense preferences turn out, and thus the electoral results represent their opinions.

In contrast, small voting costs allow people of lukewarm preferences to turn out. Because such lukewarm voters usually constitute a majority, the results of the election represent the opinions of the lukewarm majority and drown out the voices of the intense minority. This incentivizes the intense minority to raise their voices via outside options such as protests.