Delayed Date and Motivated Vote: How Election Postponement Shapes Turnout

Autocracies postpone elections for political control, but we lack an understanding of how voters respond to election postponement in autocracies. This paper argues that election postponement motivates voter turnout across partisan groups, because voters see the postponement as a sign of regime weakness and increased electoral competitiveness. Evidence from a survey experiment in Hong Kong demonstrates that reminder messages about election postponement motivate various partisan groups to turn out, an effect robust to whether and how the message is framed. While the turnout effect is larger when the message’s narrative aligns with the subject’s partisanship—such as the propaganda and intimidation frames for government supporters and the electioneering frame for opposition supporters—all postponement reminder messages have an average turnout effect, with no significant differences across partisan groups. These findings suggest that election postponement is consequential in shaping citizens’ political behavior, with crucial implications for election turnout and authoritarian stability.