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Do some types of voters vote more strategically than others? We examine this question using a large survey in Canada that asked respondents to rate not just parties and party leaders but also local candidates. Using a new technique for combining multiple preference measures into a single utility estimate, we find that better educated voters and richer voters vote more strategically, as do women and older voters (although the latter two differences are smaller). Together with recent evidence from the United Kingdom, these results suggest that (at least in multicandidate first-past-the-post elections) the same types of voters who are more likely to turn out are also more likely to make their votes count. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are citizens more likely to vote when they are asked to make plans about how they will cast their ballots? Such planning—typically described as “implementation intentions”—has been shown to increase many types of desirable behaviors, including exercising and healthy eating, receiving vaccinations, physical rehabilitation, and recycling. Important earlier work in political science suggests voter turnout can also be influenced by implementation intention interventions, whereby electors are prompted to “make a plan” to vote (Nickerson & Rogers, ), though this finding has gone largely unreplicated. At the same time, elections management bodies (EMBs) in many contexts regularly conduct informational campaigns in the period leading up to elections, though little is known about the effects of such efforts upon turnout. Using data from an online experiment conducted at the time of the 2015 Canadian Federal Election, we demonstrate that implementation intention interventions can improve voter turnout but that this effect is conditional upon electors being exposed to informational materials about how to vote in the election. When survey respondents were provided with information on voting requirements and methods, and then prompted with questions forcing them to contemplate the act of casting their ballots, we observe a sizable increase in turnout rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]