Abstract
Research on invalid voting has expanded over the past few years. Scholars largely agree on the most important determinants of invalid voting, foremost compulsory voting, quality of democracy, and ballot structure. However, disagreement prevails concerning several factors; more exactly, whether the effect is positive or negative. We examine determinants of invalid voting in the four most recent local elections in a single country, Sweden, all municipalities included. Applying a subnational research design allows us to control for several determinants that have been reported to be of significance in explaining varying levels of invalid voting, and, consequently, to examine factors with theoretically contradictory directions of effects. Two theoretical models of invalid voting are tested, an institutional and a societal model, each consisting of four variables. The latter explains considerably more of the variation in the dependent variable than the former. The most important determinant is education: higher levels of education among the population decrease the share of invalid votes. Concerning the institutional model, only district magnitude significantly affects the dependent variable, indicating that larger district magnitude depresses invalid voting. However, the effect disappears when societal variables are included, due to higher levels of education among the population in municipalities with high district magnitudes. Proportion of the electorate born abroad also significantly affects levels of invalid voting; higher proportions decrease invalid voting. We suggest that this is a consequence of political sophistication, interest, and being politically informed combined with who decides to vote and who decides to abstain amongst immigrants.
Highlights
Political participation in the form of voting in elections is regarded as an indicator of the health of democracy (e.g., Verba et al 1978; Norris 2002)
We run multivariate models with blank votes as the dependent variable; and the results reported in models 1-3 hold when blank votes are used as the dependent variable
We contribute to the invalid voting literature by examining the determinants of invalid votes in local elections in a single country
Summary
Political participation in the form of voting in elections is regarded as an indicator of the health of democracy (e.g., Verba et al 1978; Norris 2002). The electorate in a given election can be divided into three categories: those who. The bulk of the systemic study of voting behaviour has dealt with those who cast valid votes, and those who do not vote, whereas invalid voting has been given much less attention. All three categories affect the election results. Zulfikarpasic (2001) has aptly defined the invalid vote as being ‘half-way between electoral abstention and participation ... an act through which the voter manifests ... her incapacity or her refusal to make a choice from the political offer at hand’ (translation by Uggla (2008, 1144))
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