Higher Turnout Research Articles

Costly voting when both information and preferences differ: is turnout too high or too low?

We study a model of costly voting over two alternatives, where agents’ preferences are determined by both (i) a private preference in favour of one alternative e.g. candidates’ policies, and (ii) heterogeneous information in the form of noisy signals about a commonly valued state of the world e.g. candidate competence. We show that depending on the level of the personal bias (weight on private preference), voting is either according to private preferences or according to signals. When voting takes place according to private preferences, there is an unique equilibrium with inefficiently high turnout. In contrast, when voting takes place according to signals, turnout is locally too low. Multiple Pareto-ranked voting equilibria may exist and in particular, compulsory voting may Pareto dominate voluntary voting. Moreover, an increase in personal bias can cause turnout to rise or fall, and an increase in the accuracy of information may cause a switch to voting on the basis of signals and thus lower turnout, even though it increases welfare.

A Deeper Look at the Proportionality—Turnout Nexus

Evidence that turnout is higher under proportional representation (PR) than in majoritarian elections is overwhelming. Yet previous research has largely failed to explain why. One line of argument maintains that higher turnout under PR is a by-product of larger party systems. However, a larger number of parties has been demonstrated to depress turnout. Alternatively, it is argued that majoritarian electoral systems tend to produce safe seats and that voters have little incentive to turn out there. Thus, uneven turnout over electoral districts due to variable intensities of local competition is made responsible for the lower overall turnout. Empirical evidence on this conjecture is scant. This article scrutinizes the relationship between electoral rules, competition, and turnout with district-level data from 31 national elections. Results from a heteroscedastic model indicate that lower net turnout in majoritarian systems is indeed a consequence of uneven turnout over districts due to variable levels of local competitiveness.

Turn Out to Turf Out?: Effects of Changes in Election Participation Rates on Election Outcomes

Participation in elections varies throughout Europe, and while politicians frequently claim that high turnout suits them, it cannot be true for all parties. Some authors have claimed that there is a positive correlation between turnout and support for left-wing parties; others have said that increased turnout aids challengers. Both these hypotheses have received support using data on the US, but evidence from data on Europe is less convincing. This article assesses these hypotheses and tests them using different data. While there is some support for the challenger hypothesis using data on the UK, the partisan hypothesis receives no support, probably because it was mis-specified in earlier tests.

Messages that Mobilize? Issue Publics and the Content of Campaign Advertising

Does the issue content of campaign appeals mobilize particular subsets of voters? We examine whether issue content interacts with the interests and agendas of “issue publics,” focusing on the relationship between campaign messages and the turnout of senior citizens, veterans, and parents. Our analysis matches Current Population Survey respondents to media markets and then to relevant campaign advertising data in the 1998, 2000, and 2002 elections. We find that issue-specific campaign messages are not associated with higher turnout among senior citizens or veterans and are associated with only a small increase in turnout among parents. Our results suggest that campaign effects vary in their magnitude and importance for the mobilization of issue publics.

HOW MUCH DO VOTERS KNOW? AN ANALYSIS OF MOTIVATION AND POLITICAL AWARENESS

ABSTRACTDowns argued that instrumental individuals have no incentive to incur costs to turn out to vote. High turnout rates are explained in terms of intrinsic value derived from action. But if it is important to individuals that they participate, surely it matters how they participate? This paper tests the proposition that voters acquire more political information than those who abstain because they believe they have a duty to participate in collective decision‐making processes. It also considers the relevance of civic duty when explaining systematic differences between preferences expressed by those who vote and by those who abstain. Choice expressed at the ballot box is not the same as demand revealed in markets.

Political Socialization in Context: The Effect of Political Competition on Youth Voter Turnout

Adolescence is an important time for political development. Researchers have concentrated on the family as the sole socializing agent of youths; however, as Campbell, Gimpel, and others have shown, political contexts also matter for young citizens. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, the Record of American Democracy, and election outcomes data, I find that adolescents who resided in politically competitive locales or states have higher turnout years later compared to those who lived in uncompetitive contexts. These effects are not mediated by the home political environment and act through political socialization. This research adds to a growing literature on the influence of political contexts on political behavior and is the first to explore how political competition during adolescence influences voter turnout in young adulthood.

Voting to anger and to please others

A person may vote for a candidate to please citizens who prefer the same candidate, and to anger citizens who dislike the candidate. Such behavior is consistent with high turnout (though any one vote is unlikely to be decisive), with strategic voting, and with candidates adopting divergent positions.

Altruism and the Decision to Vote

A core problem at the foundation of rational-actor models for politics is the seeming irrationality of voting, i.e. that it is irrational for voters to vote and to be informed about politics. Myerson has shown that only low turnouts are feasible if we just assume citizens vote on the basis of self interest, and there is uncertainty as to the number of voters. I modify the standard analysis by arguing that individuals are motivated by weak altruistic considerations when deciding whether to vote. First, I present a formal analysis of voting that has a unique, symmetric Bayes–Nash equilibrium for the voting game. It is a mixedstrategy equilibrium which also specifies the conditions under which high turnouts (in excess of 50% of the potential voters) will result. Second, I present an empirical test of the hypothesis using a unique data set (the National Election Survey Pilot Study in 1995) which includes various measures of ‘humanitarianism.’ I am able to integrate that survey with the 1994 NES election survey to provide evidence that weak altruism is the single most important determinant of the decision to vote.

High-Speed Roller Ginning of Upland Cotton

An experiment was conducted to determine if upland cotton could be roller ginned at a considerably higher than normal rate without compromising fiber properties and at a rate comparable to saw ginning. A conventional roller gin stand was modified to run at high speed by increasing the frequency of the ginning roller and rotary knife, and increasing the force between the ginning roller and stationary knife. Other changes included adding a spray system to cool the ginning roller, enlarging the lint-flue transition, and modifying the seed-cotton feeder for increased throughput. When ginning upland cotton, the high-speed roller gin stand ginned at a rate comparable to saw ginning. The high-speed roller gin stand had the same horsepower requirement of a saw gin stand. Roller ginning, when compared to saw ginning, produced upland fiber that was about one staple length longer, had less short fiber and neps, had higher turnout, but contained more foreign matter in the lint and cottonseed. Although roller ginning did not increase bale value, the improvement in fiber properties may open up new markets for upland cotton, especially in export markets that value the significance of increased staple length and decreased short fiber contents.

Does Voting by Mail Increase Participation? Using Matching to Analyze a Natural Experiment

Would holding elections by mail increase voter turnout? Many electoral reform advocates predict that mail ballot elections will boost participation, basing their prediction on the high turnout rate among absentee voters and on the rise in voter turnout after Oregon switched to voting by mail. However, selection problems inherent to studies of absentee voters and Oregon give us important reasons to doubt whether their results would extend to more general applications of voting by mail. In this paper, we isolate the effects of voting in mail ballot elections by taking advantage of a natural experiment in which voters are assigned in a nearly random process to cast their ballots by mail. We use matching methods to ensure that, in our analysis, the demographic characteristics of these voters mirror those of polling-place voters who take part in the same elections. Drawing on data from a large sample of California counties in two general elections, we find that voting by mail does not deliver on the promise of greater participation in general elections. In fact, voters who are assigned to vote by mail turn out at lower rates than those who are sent to a polling place. Analysis of a sample of local special elections, by contrast, indicates that voting by mail can increase turnout in these otherwise low-participation contests.

Does low turnout matter? Evidence from the 2000 Canadian federal election

We examine whether turnout has a partisan bias; specifically whether higher turnout would benefit parties and policies of the left. Using data from the 2000 Canadian Election Study, we analyze differences in opinion between voters and non-voters across a wide spectrum of policy areas in order to assess the extent of divergent views between voters and abstainers. Next, by simulating universal turnout we test the hypothesis that the outcome of the 2000 Canadian Federal Election would have been appreciably different if all citizens were to have voted. We find scant evidence for a partisan effect of turnout in Canada. Voters' opinions are, by and large, representative of the larger population and universal turnout would not have changed the election result.

Introduction: Consequences of low turnout

Low electoral turnout has become common in many countries. Whether this is a problem for a democracy depends on—among other things—whether higher turnout would have made other parties more relevant. This introductory article discusses the findings and approaches of previous work on this question and summarizes the findings of the work published in this issue. The various articles, despite using different approaches, looking at different countries and different types of election, all show that any bias in election outcomes is typically rather small and is not in a specific direction: sometimes the left would benefit from higher turnout, sometimes other parties. Therefore the concerns about potential bias consequent on low turnout are generally misplaced.

Africa's Infrastructure Gathering: A Report Card

This conference's high turnout and buoyant mood was a tribute to the progress that the Corporate Council on Africa, and the constituencies represented at the conference, have made in focusing on Africa's real development challenges and in persuading U.S. corporations and institutions to do so.

A Theory of Participation in Elections

We analyze a model of participation in elections in which voting is costly and no vote is pivotal. Ethical agents are motivated to participate when they determine that agents of their type are obligated to do so. Unlike previous duty-based models of participation, in our model an ethical agent's obligation to vote is determined endogenously as a function of the behavior of other agents. Our model predicts high turnout and comparative statics that are consistent with strategic behavior.

Everyone likes a winner: An empirical test of the effect of electoral closeness on turnout in a context of expressive voting

Under instrumental voting closer elections are expected to have higher turnout. Under expressive voting, however, turnout may increase with decreasing closeness when voters have a preference for winners. An empirical test using data on Belgian municipal elections supports this. We find that turnout reaches a local maximum when the largest party in the election obtains just over 52% of the seats and then falls (supporting the “instrumental” closeness-argument). There is, however, another turning point: the presence of a highly dominating party (receiving at least two-thirds of the votes) stimulates turnout despite the fact that dominance implies lower closeness.

Does Turnout Decline Matter? Electoral Turnout and Partisan Choice in the 1997 Canadian Federal Election

Abstract.The recent decline in electoral turnout in Canada has attracted the concern of scholars and public officials, but the partisan consequences of this decline have received only scant attention. We begin to address that question with a simulation based on the 1997 Canadian Election Study. Based on estimated probabilities of individual behaviour derived from multinomial logit models of voter choice, we find that higher turnout would have likely hurt the Liberal party in Quebec, but slightly helped the Liberals outside of Quebec. We interpret this pattern as evidence that generational politics plays a role in shaping the relationship between electoral turnout and partisan support.Résumé.Le déclin récent dans la participation électorale au Canada a attiré l'intérêt des chercheurs et des représentants de l'Etat, mais les conséquences partisanes de ce déclin n'ont sucité qu'une attention limitée. Nous commençons à aborder cette question à l'aide d'une simulation basée sur l'Etude électorale canadienne de 1997. En nous appuyant sur des probabilités estimatives du comportement individuel dérivées de modèles logistique multinominal du choix d'électeur, nous constatons qu'une participation plus importante aurait probablement nuit au Parti Libéral au Québec, mais aurait légèrement favorisé le Parti Libéral en dehors du Québec. Nous interprétons ce modèle comme preuve que la politique de générations contribue à la formation du rapport entre la participation électorale et l'appui partisan.

Habitual Voting and Behavioral Turnout

Bendor, Diermeier, and Ting (2003) develop a behavioral alternative to rational choice models of turnout. However, the assumption they make about the way individuals adjust their probability of voting biases their model towards their main result of significant turnout in large populations. Moreover, the assumption causes individuals to engage in casual voting (sometimes people vote and sometimes they abstain). This result is at odds with a substantial literature that indicates most people engage in habitual voting (they either always vote or always abstain). I develop an alternative model to show how feedback in the probability adjustment mechanism affects the behavioral model. The version of this model without feedback yields both high turnout and habitual voting.

The French Referendum: The Not So Simple Act of Saying Nay

For the second time in the history of the French Vth Republic, the first having led to the resignation of Charles De Gaulle in 1969, a president lost a national referendum. On May 29, 2005, 54.7% of French voters rejected the European Constitutional Treaty, even though France was one of the major proponents of the European Convention which led to the Constitution's drafting. The victory of the “no” vote had been foreseen, but neither the margin of victory, nor the high turnout (almost 70.5%) were expected. The rejection of the Constitution raised two concerns: the first related to the position of France in Europe, the second to its domestic impact. Why did the French electorate vote as it did? Did voters make up their minds based on national cues, the European issue being generally of little importance even in European elections (Franklin, Marsh, and McLaren 1994; Van der Eijk and Franklin 1996)? Is the referendum result the consequence of a growing anti-European attitude, which could cause considerable damage to the process of EU integration? Will a new cleavage grounded on attitudes to Europe and capable of altering the traditional left-right organization emerge in the French political system? Our warmest thanks to our colleagues, Chantal Barry, Arianne Chebel d'Appolonia, and Manlio Cinnalli for their remarks on and their help with this piece.

Rocking the House: Competition and Turnout in the 2006 Midterm Election

Despite a national tide for the Democrats in the 2006 midterms that increased the number of competitive congressional races, national voter turnout rose only slightly. Consistent with previous findings, higher turnout in some states reflected increased competition in statewide races for Governor and U.S. Senate. Unexpected surprises, however, lurked among individual congressional races. Voter turnout in highly partisan and closely contested congressional races frequently exceeded turnout for the Senate or Governor's races, suggesting that partisan control over Congress motivated participation. But because there were few competitive races overall, particularly in the three most populous states, national turnout suffered. The 2006 midterm election does not signal a return to voter apathy as much as reflect an ailing electoral system, which requires reforms to increase the number competitive congressional seats to boost overall turnout.

An Economic Analysis of Voters' Turnout in Petition Referendums

In this paper we analyse four possible variables influencing voters' turnout in petition referendums in Italy: the nature of the issue (efficiency or distributive), the number of referendums voted together, the month in which the referendum is held, and parties' recommendations. The decision to vote or to abstain is important because the Italian Constitution establishes a 50% + 1 voter threshold turnout for the referendum to have legal effects. We find that distributive referendums have higher turnout than efficiency referendums, the higher the number of voters supporting parties that recommends abstention, the lower the turnout, referendums held in June have lower turnout. Finally, up to five referendums there is no effect of the number of referendums voted together on turnout. Starting from these results, we provide some suggestions for reforms.