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.     

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.     

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%.     

If you ask,they will come (to register and vote): Field experiments with state election agencies on encouraging voter registration

We address the frequent critique that voter registration is a barrier to participation in the US. Institutional reforms to voter registration produce only small impacts on participation. We show the registration barrier can be reduced without changing laws or administrative processes using official communication seeking to change individual political behavior. In collaboration with state election agencies in two states, we conducted large-scale field experiments using low cost postcards aimed at increasing registration among eligible but unregistered citizens. The experiments find statistically and substantively significant effects on registration and turnout in subsequent elections. The research partnership with election officials is unusual and important for understanding electoral participation. Further, the population targeted for registration is broader than prior experiments on voter registration in the US. The results provide important insights about voter registration as a barrier to political participation, plus practical guidance for election officials to reduce this barrier.     

Do impersonal mobilisation methods work? Evidence from a nationwide Get-Out-the-Vote experiment in England

While face-to-face mobilisation has a demonstrable effect on voter turnout, a series of field experiments show that impersonal methods, such as telephoning and direct mail, are less effective. This paper provides a new test of the effectiveness of telephone and direct mail on voter turnout, which uses a large nationally representative Get-Out-the-Vote two-wave field experiment. We find that impersonal methods are more effective, though the magnitude depends on electoral context. Moreover, these effects accumulate both within and across elections as voters are exposed to multiple contacts. However this is an incremental and cumulative process, not the product of synergy.     

Voter turnout and district-level competitiveness in mixed-member electoral systems

It has been suggested that one of the reasons why majoritarian electoral systems are associated with lower voter turnout in comparison to proportional electoral systems is that citizens in uncompetitive districts (“safe seats”) are not motivated to vote. This study brings this thesis into a new context and tests it with unique data. Mixed-member electoral systems have both majoritarian and proportional components. The relative importance of these components differs between mixed-member proportional (MMP) and mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) systems. I argue that, due to this difference, the impact of district-level competitiveness on turnout is stronger in MMM than in MMP. An analysis of district-level electoral data from four countries confirms this hypothesis. Findings from this study advance our theoretical understanding of voter participation and also of the functioning of mixed-member electoral systems.     

Voter turnout in presidential primaries: A cross-sectional examination

Decades of individual and aggregate level research suggest that three sets of factors influence voter turnout: the socioeconomic makeup of the potential voter; legal restrictions on voting; and the political context of each election. In this brief study, we use state-level data to test whether these factors combine to account for variations in turnout rates in the electoral arena of presidential primaries. As expected, high turnout is associated with states which have high median levels of education, lenient legal restrictions on voting, and a history of competitive two-party elections. Also congruent with our expectations, but at odds with research of other electoral arenas, high turnout in presidential primaries is unrelated to high campaign spending or close elections. We contend that spending in presidential primaries may be simply too low to stimulate turnout and that close primaries do not enhance turnout because voters are often unaware that the pending election will be close.The names of the authors appear in alphabetical order and imply that this study is in every way a collaborative enterprise.     

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.     

Concurrent Elections and Voter Turnout: The Effect of the De-linking of State Elections on Electoral Participation in India's Parliamentary Polls, 1971–2004

This article examines the effect that the decoupling of state and national elections has had on voter turnout in India's national parliamentary polls since 1971. According to conventional wisdom in the comparative literature on electoral turnout, separate elections to multiple levels and/or branches of government should depress turnout relative to co-temporal polls, ceteris paribus . The evidence from Indian elections provides strong confirmation for this hypothesis. This suggests that political decentralization through separate national and local elections may actually weaken citizens' incentives to participate in the democratic electoral process.     

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.     

Disproportionality and voter turnout in new and old democracies

A long-standing puzzle in electoral research is why the disproportionality of electoral systems has a negative effect on voter participation in established democracies, but not in new democracies. We propose a learning theory of electoral system’s effects, and test it in a cross-national analysis and by using Spain as a case study. Electoral disproportionality is unrelated to voter participation in early elections after democratization, but the relationship is increasingly visible as democracies grow older. The case study uncovers two mechanisms: small parties optimize their mobilization strategy only after the first democratic elections, and the difference in the turnout rates of small party supporters and large party supporters grows over time. Time is needed before the consequences of electoral systems are fully revealed. Importantly, the findings suggest that studies carried out just after an electoral system is created or reformed may provide downward biased estimates of their long-term consequences.     

What's past is prologue,or is it? Generational effects on voter turnout in post-communist countries, 1990–2013

A common theme in studies of voter turnout in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is that the legacy of communism attenuates electoral participation. It is argued that socialization and the political habits that emerged under communism impeded democratic development by not motivating citizen activism. This paper examines this claim for voter turnout in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland for all general elections since 1990 using cohort analysis on pooled crosssectional post-election surveys from given countries. This paper shows that socialization and political habit formation under communism have had no discernible effect on voter turnout in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary between 1990 and 2013. Generational effects are evident in Poland suggesting that this country's political history is qualitatively different from that of its neighbours. This research is important in highlighting that citizens' political development within non-liberal democratic regimes does not always lead to lower levels of voter turnout. Consequently, the decline in turnout in CEE is likely to have attitudinal rather than generational origins where contemporary rather than historical political developments are most important.     

Election Timing,Electorate Composition,and Policy Outcomes: Evidence from School Districts

There is considerable debate about how election timing shapes who votes, election outcomes, and, ultimately, public policy. We examine these matters by combining information on more than 10,000 school tax referenda with detailed micro‐targeting data on voters participating in each election. The analysis confirms that timing influences voter composition in terms of partisanship, ideology, and the numerical strength of powerful interest groups. But, in contrast to prominent theories of election timing, these effects are modest in terms of their likely impact on election outcomes. Instead, timing has the most significant impact on voter age, with the elderly being the most overrepresented group in low‐turnout special elections. The electoral (and policy) implications of this effect vary between states, and we offer one explanation for this variation.     

Electoral turnout and income redistribution by the state: A cross-national analysis of the developed democracies

Abstract.  This article explores the sources of variation in state redistribution across 13 developed democracies over the period 1979–2000, drawing upon data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the Luxembourg Income Study and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. The discussion begins with the median voter hypothesis, which predicts that the extent of state redistribution in a country will be positively related to the degree of pre-government inequality. In seeking to extend the median voter approach, the article takes into account two additional variables: the level of electoral turnout and the degree to which turnout is skewed by income. The analysis confirms that pre-government inequality is indeed positively related to state redistribution. However, the predictive power of the median voter approach is significantly improved when account is taken of the level of electoral turnout and the extent to which the turnout rate reflects an income skew – variables that are themselves related. The link between turnout and redistribution is especially strong for social transfers as opposed to taxes, and for the lower and middle, as opposed to the upper, part of the income spectrum.     

Candidate-centred electoral systems and voter turnout

Abstract

This study evaluates contradictory theoretical predictions concerning the relationship between the candidate-centredness of electoral systems and voter turnout. Candidate-centredness has been proposed to both stimulate and depress turnout. Cross-sectional time-series data from 36 democracies between 1990 and 2014 are used to test the competing assumptions made about the impact of the personal vote on turnout. Three measures assessing the extent to which electoral systems create incentives to cultivate a personal vote are employed. The results show that turnout is the lowest in candidate-centred systems and the highest in party-centred systems with closed and ordered lists, while controlling for a host of contextual factors that have been linked to aggregate turnout. In addition, the finding that candidate-centredness is negatively related to turnout holds up even when taking into account district magnitude, electoral disproportionality and effective number of parties.     

Electoral Cycles and Turnout in Multilevel Electoral Systems

This article differentiates between three ways in which electoral cycles may impact on participation in elections. First, it identifies a simultaneity effect – turnout increases to the extent that elections are held on the same date. A second effect is voter fatigue – turnout declines when another election has just been held before. Poll voting is a third effect. It suggests that turnout increases when another election is to be held shortly after. On the basis of a novel dataset that includes 2,915 regional elections held in 317 regions and 18 countries from 1945 to 2009, evidence is found for all three effects. The results point towards a basic dilemma in multilevel electoral systems: increase turnout by holding elections on the same date but accept high vote congruence across elections or decouple election cycles, which decreases vote congruence but lowers participation rates.     

When the election rains out and how bad weather excludes marginal voters from turning out

Ostensibly random and trivial experiences of everyday life, e.g., local weather, can have significant political consequences. First, we present a comprehensive meta-analysis of 34 studies of electoral turnout and rainfall – the vast majority demonstrating a negative association. Secondly, we present a new analysis of a voter panel with validated turnout for a complete electorate merged with fine-grained meteorological observations to show that Election Day rainfall reduces turnout by 0.95 percentage points per centimeter, while more sunshine increases turnout. Marginal voters (young voters) are up to six times more susceptible to bad weather and respond more positively to pleasant weather. Thus, bad weather exacerbates unequal democratic participation by pushing low-propensity voters to abstain. Efforts to include marginal voters therefore ought to be intensified during poor weather, and elections could even be moved to seasons with more pleasant weather to improve participatory equality.     

Electoral context,habit-formation and voter turnout: A new analysis

Drawing on the concept of habitual voting (Plutzer, 2002), Franklin (2004) argues that the effects of electoral context on voter turnout will be largely limited to the cohorts who have experienced few elections in their lifetime. Those with more electoral experience would thus remain unaffected. Testing the above hypothesis is a way of a feasible indirect examination of the concept of habitual voting. Such tests have so far focused primarily on the impact of electoral competitiveness on turnout. I propose a new superior analysis of Franklin's hypothesis that, I claim, approaches the standards of a natural experiment. My test – focusing on the national election cycles as a contextual trait of the European Parliament elections – delivers new evidence supporting this hypothesis.     

Voting,non‐voting and consumer buying behaviour: non‐voter segmentation (NVS) and the underlining causes of electoral inactivity

This paper examines some of the issues and debates surrounding the voting and non‐voting of the UK electorate. It attempts to compare and contrast voter behaviour from both a political science perspective and a consumer buying behaviour perspective. In particular, the paper details the output of primary research into non‐voter behaviour and attempts to cluster these motivations and rationales into psychographic segments of non‐voting behaviour. Issues such as alignment and dealignment, social and inherited values are debated in detail, with particular attention being paid to party identification, issue voting and social determinant theory. The paper both challenges and supports previously presented arguments regarding political issues and voting. In addition, electoral turnout and voter participation are analysed and the consequences for democracy discussed. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications