Erklärungsfaktoren kommunaler Wahlbeteiligung. Bürgermeister- und Ratswahlen im Vergleich

Abstract

Voter turnout in German local elections has only been partially examined in comparative analysis . Derived from the state of research, this analysis focuses-on the link between explanatory factors and voter turnout especially in city council and mayoral elections . The analysis shows that almost all of the hypotheses known from the literature are confirmed in city council elections nationwide . Next to hypotheses concerning socio-economic variables (unemployment rate, etc .), institutional factors have also proven to be equally explanatory in some cases . Primarily, when combining city council elections with higher level elections (e .g ., parliamentary elections), voter participation increases significantly . This has already been identified as central in the literature . Many of these hypotheses can be transferred to main elections and second (‘runoff’) ballots with largely verified causal links: Voter turnout increases significantly with the number of candidates . In contrast, a low voter turnout can be observed in re-elections . It should be noted that socio-economic factors have a stronger (statistical) link to voter turnout in second ballots than in main elections .