District Magnitude and Electoral Mobilization : How Uneven Electoral Systems Shift the Focus of Campaign Efforts by Political Parties

This paper demonstrates how an uneven electoral system shapes political parties' mobilization strategies, which in turn contribute to the gap in turnout between districts, by utilizing a majoritarian electoral system with heterogeneous district magnitudes in Japan. In contrast to existing studies, this paper finds a non-monotonic relationship between district magnitude and political parties' total mobilization efforts because the two major parties shifted their resources to single-member districts, whereas smaller parties focused on large-magnitude districts