Costly voting, turnout, and candidate valence

•We build a model of voluntary and costly expressive voting.•Weight of ideology and valence over voting costs determines how and if people vote.•Low turnout elections have more voters whose valence signal matches their ideology.•Voting costs thus raise the chances to elect high valence candidates.

We build a model of voluntary and costly expressive voting, where the relative weight of ideology and valence issues over voting costs determines how people vote and if they actually turn out to vote. In line with the conventional rational calculus approach, the model predicts that the cost of voting depresses voter turnout. Against the conventional wisdom, though, high voting cost/low turnout elections tend to have a larger share of voters for whom the common value signal on candidates' valence matches their private value views, thus raising the chances that high valence candidates are elected.