America's first voter identification laws: The effects of personal registration and declining political party competition on presidential election turnout, 1880–1916

Engaging a persistent puzzle on the decline in U.S turnout after 1896 from which the nation never recovered, this paper tests the impact of strict registration laws and declining electoral competition on turnout. This study uses an original dataset on nineteenth century voter registration laws for 1880–1916. I estimate a panel model with state and year fixed effects to test the hypothesis that the shift in electoral behavior was a function of registration reforms and competition. Findings show that turnout dropped by as much as 6 points because of personal registration laws, whereas competition increased turnout by up to 10 points. I also analyzed two case studies at the county level. The results indicate that when registration laws became increasingly stringent with stricter identification requirements, turnout dropped by as much as 19 points. Findings suggest that electoral competition could mitigate the suppressive effects of strict voting laws on turnout.     

Electoral Choice,Ideological Conflict,and Political Participation

Generations of democratic theorists argue that democratic systems should present citizens with clear and distinct electoral choices. Responsible party theorists further argued that political participation increases with greater ideological conflict between competing electoral options. Empirical evidence on this question, however, remains deeply ambiguous. This article introduces new joint estimates of citizen preferences and the campaign platforms chosen by pairs of candidates in U.S. House and Senate races. The results show that increasing levels of ideological conflict reduce voter turnout, and are robust across a wide range of empirical specifications. Furthermore, the findings provide no support for existing accounts that emphasize how ideology or partisanship explains the relationship between ideological conflict and turnout. Instead, I find that increasing levels of candidate divergence reduce turnout primarily among citizens with lower levels of political sophistication. These findings provide the strongest evidence to date for how mass political behavior is conditioned by electoral choice.     

Agency Problems, the 17th Amendment, and Representation in the Senate

A prominent change in American electoral institutions occurred when the 17th Amendment to the Constitution established direct election of U.S. Senators as of 1914. How did this change the political agency relationship between the mass electorate and U.S. Senators? We develop theoretical expectations about the representational effects of direct election by a relatively inexpert mass electorate and indirect election by a relatively expert political intermediary, based on principal‐agent theory. The chief predictions are that the representative will be more responsive to the mass electorate under direct election, but will also have more discretion to pursue his or her own ends. We use the 17th Amendment as a quasi‐experiment to test the predictions of the theory. Statistical models show strong support for both predictions. Moreover, the 17th Amendment is not associated with similar changes in the U.S. House of Representatives—as expected, since the amendment did not change House electoral institutions.     

The personal vote and voter turnout

The level of electoral turnout is arguably the most widely monitored form of electoral participation. Consequently, electoral systems have often been cited as having a significant effect on turnout levels even though scholars do not agree on the effects of these complex institutions. Since most previous studies have relied on categorical or dichotomous electoral system indicators, this study utilizes Carey and Shugart’s personal vote index to gain theoretical leverage on other electoral system components. In short, I find that where electoral competition is predicated on party, rather than candidates’, reputations, turnout levels rise. The results of a time-series cross-sectional analysis reveal that the personal vote index significantly influences turnout levels even when controlling for a host of other factors.     

Return migration,crime, and electoral engagement in Mexico

Since 2006, the Great Recession and tighter migration policies in the U.S. have increased the rates of return migration to Mexico. Scholars debate whether high rates of return motivate greater electoral engagement via the democratic norms returnees may bring back with them. An alternative account holds that returnees are seen as dissimilar by their non-migrant co-nationals, causing returnees to disengage from politics. We contribute to this debate using municipal data on voter turnout and on rates of return migration for the case of Mexico from 2000 to 2010. Relying on an instrumental strategy that exploits migrants’ exposure to changes in unemployment rates as an exogenous predictor for return, we find robust evidence that high rates of return result in less electoral participation in presidential and local elections. Besides, electoral disengagement seems to be intensified by the presence of criminal violence, which surged during our period of analysis. Return migration may have a positive impact on other modes of political participation; but at least when it comes to voting, our research aligns with the pessimistic camp of the debate in that return migration increases electoral apathy.     

Policy Networks,Elections, and State Subsidies1

What are the effects of electoral competition on the disbursement of state subsidies in industrialized democracies? I argue that the scope of subsidies, which ranges from economy‐wide to regional and industry‐specific subsidies, is determined by the extent of political (electoral) monopoly conditioned by economic threats from foreign competition. The mechanism through which electoral competition is linked to subsidies is the policy network. I assess this argument by examining thirteen Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in the period 1990–1993. The findings offer amendments to models of policy networks and speak to the importance of domestic institutions on factor mobility and trade policy.     

Young Voters at the 2005 British General Election

Pronounced declines in the number of young (non‐) voters casting their ballots in 1997 and 2001 has raised the question: are we witnessing a generational disengagement with electoral politics? It is generally understood that voter turnout is strongly related to closeness of electoral competition. This research report examines the results of the 2005 election in the context of the debate on declining youth turnout at general elections. Did a closer competition in 2005 encourage young voters back to the polls?     

Turnout Across Democracies

World democracies widely differ in legislative, executive, and legal institutions. Different institutional environments induce different mappings from electoral outcomes to the distribution of power. We explore how these mappings affect voters' participation in an election. We show that the effect of such institutional differences on turnout depends on the distribution of voters' preferences. We uncover a novel contest effect: Given the preferences distribution, turnout increases and then decreases when we move from a more proportional to a less proportional power‐sharing system; turnout is maximized for an intermediate degree of power sharing. Moreover, we generalize the competition effect, common to models of endogenous turnout: Given the institutional environment, turnout increases in the ex ante preferences evenness, and more so when the overall system has lower power sharing. These results are robust to a wide range of modeling approaches, including ethical voter models, voter mobilization models, and rational voter models.     

Polarization,Ideology, and Vote Choice in U.S. Congressional Elections

Despite the debate about mass polarization, most scholars agree that parties in Congress have become increasingly polarized over time. Scholars have sought to connect party polarization to the beliefs and perceptions of individual citizens, but little work exists on the relationship between polarization and the vote choices made by ordinary citizens. In this article, I examine the link between party polarization at the elite level, the use of ideology by citizens, and their vote choices in Congressional elections. I argue that the increased polarization that has occurred over time has led people to place more weight on ideology when casting their votes in U.S. House elections. My hypothesis stems from work on group conflict theory, which suggests that when people sense a high degree of conflict between two groups, a cue from elites, they will be more likely to rely on their own relevant characteristics or attitudes when making choices. This study differs from previous work on Congressional elections in that I examine variation in the effect of ideology on vote choice over multiple elections rather than just in one or two elections. I argue that an exploration of the political context (or the political context perceived by voters) is necessary in order to more fully understand the use of ideology in U.S. elections. To the extent that polarization facilitates the use of information shortcuts among voters, it might be viewed as a positive development within the context of electoral politics.     

Estimating the unintended participation penalty under top-two primaries with a discontinuity design

Participation in U.S. elections lags behind most of its developed, democratic peers. Reformers seeking to increase voter turnout often propose changes to the electoral system as means of addressing these shortcomings. One such reform, the top-two blanket primary, has been adopted in California and Washington in part to boost voter participation. Despite the promises of reformers, however, observers disagree as to its efficacy. In this paper, I estimate the participation penalty generated by top-two primaries using a regression discontinuity design (RDD). I estimate that general elections featuring two members of the same party – the arrangement reformers contend would increase turnout – actually decrease voter participation. I find that approximately 7% of voters “roll off” the ballot in the absence of party competition while overall turnout is unaffected. These results suggest that top-two primaries are likely to exacerbate rather than ameliorate trends in participation.     

A note on electoral competition and turnout in run-off electoral systems: Taking into account both endogeneity and attenuation bias

In this short note, I propose an identification strategy to estimate the causal effect of expected electoral competition on voter turnout in run-off systems taking into account both endogeneity and attenuation bias. I find that electoral competition significantly raises turnout. Not addressing attenuation bias yields estimates that are biased by up to 50%.     

Subnational political opportunity structures and the success of the radical right: Evidence from the March 2004 regional elections in France

Abstract.  This article attempts to explain the impact of department-level political opportunity structures on the electoral success of the French Front National (FN) in the 2004 regional elections. The concept of 'political opportunity structure' refers to the degree of openness of a particular political system and the external institutional or socio-economic constraints and opportunities that it sets for political parties. Comparative analysis across subnational units is conducted where the 94 departments of mainland France are the units of analysis. The significance of electoral institutions (district magnitude), party competition (effective number of parties), electoral behaviour (turnout) and socioeconomic conditions (immigration and unemployment) on the ability of the FN to gather votes across the departments is assessed by means of multiple regression. The empirical results show that the subnational political opportunity structures have been of great importance for the FN. Some four out of the five independent variables are statistically significant and explain a great deal of the variance in the two dependent variables (electoral support for FN list and index of electoral success). Turnout and district magnitude are negatively correlated with the electoral fortunes of the FN, while unemployment and the effective number of party lists are positively correlated with the success of the FN in the regional elections. The variable that indicates the share of non-European immigrants does not provide additional explanatory power in a statistically significant way.     

Why Bother Lying When You Know So Few Care? Party Contact,Education and Over‐reporting Voter Turnout in Different Types of Elections

Studies on individual‐level voter turnout in the European Parliament elections rely solely on self‐reported turnout data. At the same time, a long tradition in public opinion research examines the impact of individual and contextual variables on over‐reporting of voter turnout. The ultimate goal of these efforts is an assessment of the bias introduced when turnout models are estimated from self‐reported turnout data. In this article, it is proposed that certain characteristics related to turnout (and turnout over‐reporting), like university education or party contact, should also be positively associated with political awareness and knowledge. If so, they might contribute to respondents' greater ability to distinguish between different salience levels, significantly increasing non‐voters' propensity to over‐report turnout in high‐salience elections, but not in low‐salience ones. This hypothesis is tested using data on electoral participation in Sweden, comparing patterns of turnout over‐reporting in the (high‐salience) national parliament elections and the (low‐salience) European Parliament elections. The results of this test, the first one to give an account of patterns of over‐reporting of turnout in the European Parliament elections, largely support the above hypothesis. Finally, the consequences of this phenomenon for the validity of inferences made from self‐reported turnout data are analyzed.     

The impact of closeness on electoral participation exploiting the Italian double ballot system

We investigate whether the degree of political competition affects electoral turnout by using Italian municipal election data from 1993 to 2011. Relying on elections held using a double ballot system, we apply an instrumental variable technique exploiting the actual closeness between the two leading candidates in the first round as an instrument for closeness in the second round. The use of this strategy to estimate the impact of closeness on turnout is new to the literature. Controlling for municipal fixed effects and candidates’ characteristics, we find that expected closeness significantly increases turnout, thus supporting the idea that the expected benefits of voting increase in tighter political races. The estimated effect is much larger than that found when measuring closeness with ex-post electoral results, suggesting quite a relevant endogeneity bias in previous studies.     

Exit,Voice, and Cyclicality: A Micrologic of Midterm Effects in European Parliament Elections

Very few theories of democratic elections can claim to overarch the field. One of them that has not been given due regard, I suggest, is Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. I aim to exploit the integrative capacity of this general framework in a model of typical “midterm” effects occurring through the electoral cycle. The model unites such diverse phenomena as antigovernment swings, declining turnout, protest voting, conversion, and alienation. An empirical test with comparative survey data from elections to the European Parliament reveals that the role of strategic voting in the form of voice is limited. Instead, processes of de‐ and realignment in the form of exit dominate a picture of European Parliament elections beyond the widespread conception of “second‐order” irrelevance. More generally, the “cyclical” view on voting behavior suggests systematic links between short‐run midterm effects and long‐run electoral change.     

Budget Transparency, Fiscal Performance, and Political Turnout: An International Approach

This paper attempts, for the first time, to assess the relationships between budget transparency, fiscal situation, and political turnout using a comparative international approach. With this aim, the authors build a comprehensive index of budget transparency encompassing 40 budget features based on international standards for a sample of 41 countries. They find a positive relationship between national government fiscal balance and budget transparency: The more information the budget discloses, the less the politicians can use fiscal deficits to achieve opportunistic goals. The univariate analysis shows a positive relationship between political turnout and transparency. This result gives some evidence of a positive answer to the question raised by James Alt and David Dreyer Lassen: Does transparency affect political outcomes such as turnout? To some extent, that the more transparent the budget reports are, the more incentives people have to vote. With respect to three variables—transparency, government fiscal balance, and electoral turnout—three clusters of countries arise: low transparency–fiscal imbalance, low transparency–small fiscal imbalance and high transparency–fiscal surplus.     

Does district magnitude matter? The case of Taiwan

A sizable literature on electoral institutions argues that proportional electoral rules lead to higher voter turnout. However, recent work finds little evidence that the effect generalizes beyond western Europe and suggests that the theoretical arguments in the literature remain sparse, incomplete, and contradictory. I use a well-chosen data set to resolve the problem of omitted variable bias and Bayesian model averaging to address model uncertainty. I use Bayes factors to evaluate evidence both for and against the null hypotheses and find that the proportionality of electoral rules exerts no meaningful effect on turnout or any of the theoretical mechanisms I test.     

Patrons against clients: Electoral uncertainty and bureaucratic tenure in politicized states

Why would incumbents undertake institutional reforms that constrain their discretion over state resources? Many studies point to electoral competition in response. They argue that incumbents who risk exit from office undertake reform to insure themselves against potentially hostile successors. This paper challenges this line of reasoning, arguing that it confounds two potential implications of electoral competition – potential and certain electoral losses – which yield contrary reform incentives. Certain exits from office may well incentivize reforms as insurance. Where elections are contested, however, incumbents face incentives to resist reforms that constrain discretion over state resources that provide incumbents with electoral advantage. This argument is developed and assessed with an institutional reform the literature has so far neglected: job stability protections (tenure) in politicized bureaucracies. A case analysis of the Dominican Republic and suggestive cross‐country data confirm theoretical predictions: electoral uncertainty dis‐incentivizes tenure reform. Electoral competition may thus be a double‐edged sword for institutional reform.     

Uncovering the micro-foundations of turnout and electoral systems

This paper tackles the micro-foundations of voting and addresses why proportional representation systems (PR) are associated with higher turnout than majoritarian systems (SMD). I argue that individual evaluations of the differential benefit in the calculus of voting are affected by spatial party competition framed by electoral institutions. Unlike PR, SMD constrains the number of parties and creates large centripetal forces for party competition, which reduces the perceived benefits of voting. A citizen’s voting propensity is related to the distance between her preferred policy position and those of her most- and least-favored parties. I use multilevel modeling to analyze individual voting decisions structured by aggregate variables across 64 elections. The empirical findings confirm the argument and the mechanism holds both in established and non-established democracies.     

Civic Decline? Trends in Political Involvement and Participation in Norway, 1965–2001

Electoral turnout in Norway has been declining over a long period for local elections and, at the four most recent Storting elections, turnout has been at a lower level than in the preceding 25 years. This article investigates whether the fall in turnout generalises to other forms of political participation and political involvement. Data from the Norwegian Election Studies 1965–2001 and the Norwegian Values Studies 1982–1996 are analysed. In contrast to the decline of turnout, the authors find that the broader political activity of citizens has increased. The rise in political involvement and activism is quite widespread, covering dimensions like political interest, political discussion and political action. The increase includes forms of participation where political parties play a strong role and in direct action where parties are supposed to be less important. Education is strongly associated with most forms of civic participation and the rise in educational levels normally leads to an increase in participation rates. Data show that women are now as active as men in most dimensions of participation. In Norway, turnout at elections displays one pattern over time, while other indicators of political participation and involvement show different trajectories. There is no general civic decline. Using political involvement and participation as a criterion for judging the state of democracy, and taking into account the whole set of indicators studied in this article, one may reasonably conclude that Norwegian civic democracy is in better health than if one focused only on the fall in electoral turnout.