Turnout In General Elections Research Articles

Intra-party democracy: the intra-party election of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf in 2012–2013 and its outcome for the party and overall democracy in Pakistan

ABSTRACT Political parties are considered the basic institutions in a representative democratic system. It engaged the party members through internal and external party activities. The members of established political parties have gained more power to select candidates and party leadership in developed democracies. Pakistan is a developing democratic country; Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf announced an intra-party election in 2012 to elect candidates for the general election 2013 in Pakistan. However, it is a fact that intra-party participation promotes equality and increased vote bank, party membership and turnout in general elections. The main aim of this paper is to examine the consequences of the intra-party election of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf held in 2012. Hence, this study concludes that the membership and vote bank of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has increased, grass-roots members promoted through proper channels and many candidates elected first time as members of parliament, as well as impacted the turnout in general elections of Pakistan. This study is an attempt to examine the impact of intra-party elections on the party membership, vote bank and turnout in general elections held in Pakistan before and after this intra-party election.

ТРАНСФОРМАЦИЯ ВЛИЯНИЯ ЭТНИЧЕСКОГО ФАКТОРА НА ИТОГИ ФЕДЕРАЛЬНЫХ ВЫБОРОВ (2003–2021) В ВОСТОЧНОЙ СИБИРИ4

Eastern Siberia, which is considered by the author as comprising the republics of Buryatia, Sakha (Yakutia), Tyvaand Khakassia, the Transbaikal and Krasnoyarsk territories, the Irkutsk region, is characterized by a mosaic ethnic composition. Thereare distinguished large nations, living mainly in the republics, and small nations, residing in small areas in different territories of themacro region. The former, due to their large numbers, are able to influence election results, which is expressed in high turnout andpolitical preferences oriented toward support for the ‘party in power’ and its leader – the current president. However, in the last presidential election (2018) and State Duma election (2021), we noted a decrease in the close relationship between the share of indigenouspeoples and turnout as well as voting for the United Russia and Vladimir Putin. This article aims to analyze the dynamics of turnout in general elections to the State Duma from 2003 to 2016 in comparisonwith the last election campaign of 2021 and presidential elections in 2012–2018 as well as the dynamics of the number of votes for theparties and the presidential candidates (Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zhirinovsky). The research materials included the 2020 AllRussian Population Census, actually conducted in 2021, and the GAS-Elections database of the Central Election Commission of theRussian Federation. The study applied cartographic and statistical methods; a special method of correlation analysis was used to establish the closeness of the relationship between the indicators.An analysis of turnout dynamics showed a decrease in turnout at the 2021 elections to the State Duma compared to the 2003–2016 average, as well as at the 2018 presidential elections compared to the 2004–2012 level. The latest election campaign to the StateDuma demonstrated an increase in support for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and a decrease in the ratings of theUnited Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia in Eastern Siberia. In the presidential elections, there is noted a positivetrend in votes for Vladimir Putin in constituent entities of the Russian Federation with predominantly Russian population and its declinein some constituent entities created according to the national-ethnic principle (the Republic of Sakha) as well as territories formedbased on this principle (Aginsky Buryatsky District of the Transbaikal Territory), etc.

The natural environment and social cohesion: Tree planting is associated with increased voter turnout in Portland, Oregon

Research suggests that social cohesion partially mediates the health benefits of being exposed to the natural environment. However, past studies have relied on self-reported measures of social cohesion that have well-documented limitations. Therefore, we evaluate the impact of tree planting on social cohesion using voter-turnout data as an objective metric of social cohesion. Our study area is the 141 Census tracts in Multnomah County, Oregon that fall within (>50% area) the City of Portland. We used biennial primary and general-election turnout data from 2002 to 2020, and tree-planting data from the Portland based non-profit Friends of Trees. We estimated mixed models of voter turnout including tract-level random effects and controlling for socioeconomic status. Voter turnout and tree planting may be codetermined, so lagged tree-planting variables were used in all regression models. We found that each tree planted 10–11 years before an election was associated with a 0.020% (95% CI: 0.013–0.027) increase in general election turnout and a 0.016% (95% CI: 0.0089–0.023) increase in primary turnout. As the length of the planting lag decreased, the association between tree planting and voter turnout, in both primary and general elections, declined in significance and magnitude. Our results add to the body of evidence suggesting that social cohesion partially mediates the health benefits of exposure to the natural environment.

Social Media Effects on General Elections Turn-Out

The present study explores the effects of social media on general elections turn-out. Media is considered the fourth pillar of the state. This study was conducted in Bahawalpur city that is called a princely state and considered the heart of Southern Punjab, a sample of 200 respondents was selected as Stratified Random Sample technique including males and females form 18-60 years. Survey method was used for data collection and questionnaire was prepared including 15 close ended questions. The present study conducted under the light of Uses and Gratification Theory and Diffusion of innovation Theory”. The study conclude that social media has strong positive effects on current political situation of the Bahawalpur. Social media aware people to vote for the country and for the promotion of democracy. Moreover, during elections social media attract more people to participate in political process. Study further concludes that social media also plays an important role in increasing turn-out in general elections.

Increasing Voter Participation by Altering the Costs and Stakes of Voting*

ObjectivesWhile many states are increasing the costs of voting through voter identification laws, Washington State has enacted two policies that may increase voter participation. Specifically, as of 2012, the entire state uses a vote‐by‐mail system, reducing the cost of voting. In addition, Washington adopted a top‐two primary format in 2008, increasing the importance of primaries.MethodsUsing turnout data between 2000 and 2014, we examine the effect of vote‐by‐mail and the top‐two primary format on voter turnout.ResultsWe find that both of these policies have had a positive impact on voter turnout in Washington State primaries, raising turnout to the point where Washington's primary turnout exceeds the general election turnout in other states.ConclusionsThese results suggest that other states might consider vote‐by‐mail and/or a top‐two primary format to increase voter participation.

Compulsory Voting: A Defence

AbstractTurnout is in decline in established democracies around the world. Where, in the mid-1800s, 70–80 percent of eligible voters regularly participated in US Presidential elections, turnout has averaged just 53.7 percent since 1972. Average turnout in general elections in the UK has fallen from 76.6 percent during the period 1945–92, to 64.7 percent since 1997. Average turnout in Canadian federal elections has fallen from 74.5 percent during the period 1940–79, to 62.5 percent since 2000. For most democrats, these numbers are a cause for alarm. Compulsory voting is amongst the most effective means of raising turnout. However, compulsory voting is also controversial. Most of us think that coercion may only be employed against the citizenry if it is backed by a justification of the right kind. Opponents of compulsory voting charge that no such justification is available. This article resists this line of argument in two ways. First, I offer an argument from free-riding which, though gestured towards by others, and widely criticized, has yet to be defended in any depth. Second, I consider a range of objections to compulsory voting as such, arguing that none succeeds.

Do we need warm leaders? Exploratory study of the role of voter evaluations of leaders’ traits on turnout in seven European countries

AbstractPrevious research on leader effects has focused exclusively on the impact of voters’ evaluations of leaders on vote choice, disregarding possible effects on the prior step of deciding whether or not to turn out to vote. In line with the personalisation of politics thesis, leaders have a higher impact among dealigned voters. Previous studies have demonstrated that leader effects are stronger among voters who voice their dealignment – namely party switchers. However, the potential impact of leaders among those who exited (i.e., who have abstained) is still unstudied. Could leaders have a mobilisation effect and therefore trigger turnout decisions? What characteristics of party leaders are more relevant in this regard? This article is the first comparative study to examine how the evaluation of party leaders’ traits influences voter turnout in general elections. The work incorporates data from election studies across seven countries with different social contexts (Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and Hungary). Characteristics of leaders were grouped into two dimensions – competence and warmth – in accordance with the stereotype content model and relevant studies on leaders’ traits evaluation. Multiple binary logistic regression models were performed to analyse the predictive power of competence and warmth on turnout, controlling for sociodemographic, political ideology variables and voters’ past political behaviour. Results reinforce the personalisation of politics theory, showing the utmost relevance of warmth personality traits of leaders in voter turnout decisions. Competence personality traits were found to be relevant only in some situations. Interaction effects were also demonstrated between warmth evaluations and identifying with a right‐wing party as well as past political behaviour with both warmth and competence.

How Polling Place Changes Reduce Turnout: Evidence from Administrative Data in North Carolina

How do changes to voting procedures affect participation in elections? Looking within the state of North Carolina, I estimate the causal effect of Election Day polling place changes on voter participation using detailed individual-level voter file information linked with a panel of polling place locations. Implementing a series of difference-in-differences designs, I find that changing a voter’s polling place location causes a 1 to 2 percentage point decline in general election turnout likelihood. The majority of the turnout decline can be attributed to the search costs associated with finding one’s new polling place location rather than the distance costs of traveling to the polling place on Election Day. This, along with a series of mechanism tests, suggests that providing information to voters is important to help mitigate the voting costs associated with election changes.

Black Candidates and Black Turnout: A Study of Viability in Louisiana Mayoral Elections

What effect does a candidate’s race have on coracial voter turnout? Recent studies have found mixed results, largely because it is difficult to separate the effect of candidate race from other factors that drive voter turnout. We argue that viability is a key element in the theory of turnout among coracial voters that has been overlooked in the extant literature. We develop a broad-based concept of candidate viability that is dependent on both the candidate and the electoral environment. To test this hypothesis, we make use of the unique runoff structure of mayoral elections in the state of Louisiana between 1988 and 2011. We argue that runoff elections heighten viability in ways rarely seen in most elections. We find that while there is an effect of candidate race on black turnout in general elections, the effect is much more robust in runoff elections.

Why don't people vote in U.S. primary elections? Assessing theoretical explanations for reduced participation

Primary election participation in the United States is consistently lower than general election turnout. Despite this well-documented voting gap, our knowledge is limited as to the individual-level factors that explain why some general election voters do not show up for primary contests. We provide important insights into this question, using a novel new survey to examine three theoretical perspectives on participation never before empirically applied to primary races. Compared to general elections, we find that for U.S. House primary elections sizable segments of the electorate consider the stakes lower and the costs of voting greater, feel less social pressure to turn out and hold exclusionary beliefs about who should participate, and are more willing to defer to those who know and care more about the contests. Multivariate analysis reveals that these attitudes explain validated primary election participation. These findings point to new directions for future research.

An institutional analysis of voter turnout: the role of primary type and the expressive and instrumental voting hypotheses

Recent events highlight primary type as an institutional variable that merits further examination in the economics literature on voter turnout. Using panel data for U.S. gubernatorial elections and treating primary type as a proxy for candidate deviation from the median voter, we test whether primary type changes voter turnout and whether that change is dominated by instrumental or expressive voting. The results show that states with more open primaries tend to have greater voter turnout in general elections, and that this increase reflects the effect of open primaries on expressive voting.

The turnout ‘gap’ and the costs of voting – a comparison of participation at the 2001 general and 2002 local elections in England

Evidence from both sample surveys and the marked electoral registers is used to compare the participation of individual electors at the 2001 general election and the 2002 local elections in England. In those cases where conventional electoral procedures have been retained, there is a continuing gap between local and general election turnout. Those who vote at both types of election tend to have a sharper sense of civic duty and/or an incentive to vote based on the benefits perceived to be likely to accrue from the outcome of the local contest. However, in those places where the costs of participation are reduced through the introduction of all-postal voting, the turnout gap disappears as does the distinctive character of those who vote in local elections. In each case the findings support a rational choice model of participation with respondents weighing the benefits and costs of voting in the context of their own sense of duty.

A Low Turnout Landslide: Abstention at the British General Election of 1997

Turnout at the 1997 British General Election fell to a post-war low of 71 percent, raising worried speculation about long term decline in political participation. On closer analysis, however, this judgement seems premature. Most of the post-war decline in British turnout occurred between 1950 and 1970, and there is no evidence of long term decline in general election turnout between 1974 and 1997. The closeness of the electoral competition is a better predictor of national turnout than a secular trend. Close elections produce high turnout, but widely anticipated landslides (as in 1997) produce low turnouts. The 1997 election was also notable for the small ideological gap between the main parties. Analysis of individual voter abstention in 1992 and 1997 reveals that changes from one year to the other in the perceived difference between Labour and the Conservatives is crucial to accounting for the fall in turnout between the two contests. Turnout in 1997 was low because the result was widely anticipated and because relatively few saw important policy differences between the parties, not because British democracy is in crisis.

Partisanship, national identity and constitutional preferences: an exploration of voting in the Scottish devolution referendum of 1997

The Scottish devolution referendum of September 1997 was a rare event in British politics. The question of Scotland's constitutional position has been a salient issue in Scottish politics for some time, however, and survey evidence shows that electors' preferences on the issue are strongly related to their partisanship and sense of national identity. Electors' participation in the referendum was influenced by the same sorts of factors that affect turnout in general elections but also varied according to the strength of their feelings on the devolution issue. Partisanship and national identity also appear to be the key variables underlying voters' decisions on both referendum questions.

Turnout in gubernatorial and senatorial primary and general elections in the South, 1922–90: A rational choice model of the effects of short-run and long-run electoral competition on relative turnout

Using data on non-presidential-year elections for governor and U.S. Senators in eight southern states over the period 1922– 1990, we provide a rational-choice-inspired model of the factors that should be expected to affect the relative levels of turnout in primaries as compared to general elections. Both V.O. Key and Anthony Downs have argued that voters will be more likely to participate in the elections in which they can most expect to be decisive. V.O. Key (1949) proposed that when general elections are usually lop-sided because of one-party dominance of a state's politics the primary of the dominant party of the state should have a higher turnout than the general election. Downs argued that turnout should be higher in competitive elections. Our modelling combines these ideas. We use as our dependent variable the ratio of primary to general election turnout in each year. We posit that this ratio will increase (1) the greater the degree of within-party competition in the primary (especially that within the dominant party of a state, if there is one), and (2) the weaker the degree of between party competition in the general election. In addition to election-specific effects, we also posit long-run effects, such that the ratio for the offices of governor and U.S. Senator will be affected not merely by the degrees of competition within and between parties specific to any given election, but also by the long-run trends in party competition. This hypothesis leads us to expect that, (3) in the South, with the rise of the Republican party, the ratio of primary to general election turnout should decline over time. All of our expectations about the links between turnout and competition are strongly supported. We argue that rational choice models of turnout perform quite well when we view them in a comparative statics perspective, rather than using them to make predictions about who will and who will not vote in any given election.

Primaries, General Elections, and Voter Turnout

This article uses a multinomial logit model in testing whether or not the same process is at work in determining both primary and general election turnout (the study also tests a number of hypotheses concerning why people vote). The advantage of this methodology is that it allows the incorporation of primary and general election voting into the same model. It also allows direct comparisons between groups of voters. The results of the individual-level analysis indicate that a variety of short-term (campaign interest and concern about the election outcome) and long-term factors (efficacy, civic duty, and perceived level of information) influence the decision to vote. It appears that the same process is at work in determining both primary and general election turnout. Although a simple vote/no vote dichotomy may seem reasonable for most turnout studies, the current model demonstrates that there are subtle differences between voters who participate at different levels.

Marginality and Turnout in General Elections in the 1970s

In an article published some time ago. we analysed in a systematic way the relationship between constituency marginality and turnout in British general elections between 1955 and 1970. Previous considerations of marginality had concentrated on its effect upon change in turnout from one election to the next, but we were concerned with the relationship between the absolute level of turnout in constituencies in one election and their marginality at the previous election (‘previous marginality’). We found that there was a consistent, significant, positive relationship between previous constituency marginality and turnout.

Marginality and Turnout in British General Elections

One of the most striking features of British general election results is the large variation in turnout from one constituency to another. In the 1970 election, for instance, turnout in Britain ranged from 44–9 per cent in Stepney to 85–3 per cent in Cornwall North. Moreover, the variation in turnout has become greater in recent years. While the mean turnout in general elections has tended to fall, the standard deviation of turnout has increased steadily from 5–3 in the 1955 election to 6–9 in the 1970 election. With the exception of the Nuffield studies, however, there have been few attempts to investigate this variation. Political scientists have concentrated instead on describing and attempting to explain differences in turnout between different social and demographic groups.