Levels Of Electoral Participation Research Articles

Examining voter turnout using multiscale geographically weighted regression: The case of Slovakia

Abstract Voter turnout is an essential aspect of elections and often reflects the attitude of a country’s population towards democracy and politics. Therefore, examining the distribution of voter turnout and determining the factors that influence whether or not people will vote is crucial. This study aims to find significant factors that underlie the different levels of electoral participation across regions in Slovakia during the 2020 parliamentary elections. In this interpretation, special attention is paid to the ability of the main theories of voter turnout to explain the behaviour of Slovak voters. The primary analytical tool is multiscale geographically weighted regression, which represents an advanced local regression modelling variant. The results indicate that the multiscale geographically weighted regression is superior to the global ordinary least square model in virtually all aspects. Voter turnout is generally higher in economically and socially prosperous localities and regions, which is in line with the societal modernisation theory. Additionally, factors connected to mobilisation theory and the concept of ‘left behind places’ also proved to be valuable. However, in other cases, such as with the share of retirees and potential habitual voting, the outcomes were not overly convincing, and further research is required.

Pilkada During a Pandemic: The Influence of News Media on Trust and Political Participation Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

Communication research has examined the relationship and influence of news exposure on political attitudes and behavior. From the perspective of the democratic process, an important question in this research is related to the extent to which information exposure regarding the handling of the COVID-19 virus outbreak affects public trust in the government and its political institutions. In particular, the purpose of this research is to examine the extent to which exposure to information about the COVID-19 pandemic affects public perceptions and political beliefs in one of the areas that has the highest rate of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia and holds regional head elections in the midst of a pandemic. In addition, this study also examines whether there is a relationship between the perceived threat of being exposed to the virus and political trust with the level of electoral participation in the midst of a pandemic. This research method uses a quantitative approach with the selected location is Surakarta, Central Java. Data were collected through online questionnaires and offline questionnaires to people who have a Surakarta KTP and are included in the Voters List in the 2021 regional head election. The sampling used is non-probability sampling so that the results of this study do not intend to produce findings that will generalize to the entire population but only a theoretical test. By conducting a survey of 211 respondents, this study found several findings. First, even in the midst of a health crisis due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, the level of public participation in the 2020 Pilkada tends to be high. Second, political trust influenced by media coverage has a positive correlation with the high level of public participation in the Regional Head Election in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Geografía de la participación electoral y diferenciación socioespacial en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua (México)

Recientemente los estudios de geografía electoral en México están incorporando conceptos como dependencia espacial para valorar la dimensión geográfica como una de las dimensiones explicativas del voto. El artículo plantea como objeto de estudio la relación entre la diferenciación socioespacial y la participación ciudadana en la formación de núcleos entre las secciones electorales de Ciudad Juárez, México. En esta dependencia se toma en cuenta la importancia de los efectos espaciales, dados estos últimos por la proximidad de las secciones electorales. Este trabajo presenta técnicas de análisis espacial (autocorrelación espacial, regresiones espaciales y métodos cartográficos). Entre los principales resultados se encontró evidencia de agrupamientos espaciales, lo que significa que en el espacio geográfico los valores del porcentaje participación electoral y de diferenciación socio espacial tiene una mayor relación con aquellos espacios más cercanos que los distantes, donde una disminución en el nivel de diferenciación socioespacial aumenta el nivel de participación electoral. Y estos valores varían en el espacio urbano verificando que la configuración espacial de la participación ciudadana en Ciudad Juárez durante las elecciones presidenciales del 2012 no se produce de manera aleatoria quedando evidencia de la interdependencia y retroalimentación entre las secciones electorales ratificando el efecto de vecindario.

Classification of provinces in Indonesia based on 2014 presidential election participation levels using fuzzy c-means

The presidential and vice presidential elections held every five years is a benchmark for democracy in Indonesia. However, the expected level of participation cannot be achieved. Election socialization as an effort to increase the level of participation in each province is different because the level of participation in each province is also varied. Therefore, there is a need of regional grouping based on the level of electoral participation in order to facilitate the electoral socialization process. This study uses fuzzy c-means with two attributes, namely the number of voters and the number of voting rights users. All provinces in Indonesia are classified into two clusters. If the provincial participation rate is below the national participation standard (69.58%) then the province is considered to have a low participation rate and vice versa. Therefore, the first cluster constitutes provinces with high electoral participation rate and the second cluster constitutes provinces with low electoral participation rate. The results of the classification are 9 provinces in first cluster and 24 provinces in the second cluster.

Democratic Stress and Political Institutions: Drives of Reforms of Bicameralism in Times of Crisis

ABSTRACT Traditional patterns of political participation and party representation in Europe have been put to the test by the so-called crisis of representative democracy: mainstream parties have been perceived as more unfit to govern; the level of electoral participation has decreased; and voters have shown increasing dissatisfaction with representative institutions. In several cases, these changes have pushed governing elites to (seek to) redefine the ‘rules’ of the political process, in response to the challenges posed by new party contesters. In particular, in different European countries political actors have stressed the need to undermine the role of second chambers as veto players. This article focuses on both successful and failed attempts of reforms of bicameralism between 2006 and 2016 in seven EU countries (Belgium; Germany; Ireland; Italy; Romania; Spain; UK). It tries (1) to understand if political elites in Europe have pursued parliamentary reforms as a reaction to ‘democratic stress’ and (2) to single out the circumstances of success and failures. A discussion of the detectable trends of institutional reforms during democratic crises and some tentative explanations are finally provided.

Differential Responsiveness in Europe: The Effects of Preference Difference and Electoral Participation

As a core principle of contemporary democracy, political representation has been the subject of numerous studies. In particular, responsiveness has been thoroughly examined and research suggests that policies tend to reflect citizens’ preferences. However, it has also been argued that, in some instances, responsiveness systematically reflects the preferences of the rich better than those of the poor, hence violating a second democratic principle, that of political equality. While much research has focused on the United States, this study tests whether differential responsiveness also occurs in European democracies and enquires about the structural factors that may cause such inequality. The article examines to what extent the preference gap between the rich and the poor as well as the level of electoral participation can account for variation in differential responsiveness. To do this, a dataset including information on 25 European countries from 2002 to 2010 is constructed and analysed using time-series cross-sectional methods. The findings suggest that European democracies experience differential responsiveness and that the preference gap and level of turnout partly account for this.

Three's a crowd? The Nader vote in the 2000 presidential, election in U.S. metropolitan areas

The 2000 U.S. presidential election resulted in one of the closest and most controversial outcomes in U.S. history. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader had little chance of winning, but nevertheless impacted the race in several close states and arguably swung the race from Al Gore to George W. Bush. This research examines Ralph Nader's “urban strategy” to win 5% of the vote for president and the bases of his electoral support. This study uses the METRO_2000 data set which contains a variety of publicly available variables for 276 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the year 2000. The analysis uses OLS regression to examine the determinants of the percentage of the vote for Nader in each MSA. The results indicate that the Nader vote was positively influenced by key electoral variables such as the level of electoral participation, whether Nader was on the ballot or could be written in, and the closeness of the race in state polls leading up to the election. The Nader vote was also higher in MSAs with high percentages of voters who supported Nader programs including environmentalists, those favoring universal health care and gay rights, union members, and MSAs that were college towns or with high percentages of college-educated voters. Ralph Nader's urban strategy effectively mobilized enough of his electoral base to impact the 2000 election, but electoral constraints and the closeness of the race prevented him from achieving his goal of attaining 5% of the vote. This case holds lessons about the limits and possibilities of third party campaigns in U.S. presidential elections.

Voter Turnout in the 2010 Congressional Midterm Elections

Against the backdrop of the 2008 presidential election, a watershed event in terms of electoral participation, many speculated that renewed interest in voting would spill over into the 2010 cycle, resulting in a meaningful uptick in voter turnout in the midterm elections overall. Turnout was expected to be especially robust among Republicans eager to regain their numbers in 2010, capitalizing on Democratic withdrawal fueled by voters' frustration with President Obama, congressional Democrats, and the struggling economy. In 2008, an electorate energized around an historic contest and unprecedented levels of voter mobilization helped to drive more citizens to the polls on Election Day than ever before (Panagopoulos and Francia 2009). An estimated 131.1 million Americans voted for president, representing 61.6% of the eligible voting population (McDonald 2009). Voter turnout among eligible voters in 2008 was 1.5 percentage points higher than in 2004, when 122.3 million voters participated in the presidential election (Bergan et al. 2005). The 2008 election thus marked the third consecutive presidential election cycle in which voter turnout increased, reversing a trend of declining participation that began in the 1960s (McDonald 2009). In fact, national turnout in recent presidential elections has rivaled modern highs in the level of electoral participation that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s.

Land Tenure, Democracy, and Patterns of Violence During the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal, 1996-2005*

Objectives. We seek to investigate the determinants of Nepal's relapse into authoritarianism and resort to violence rather than reform as a response to the Maoist insurgency. Revolutionary insurgency emerged in Nepal after a transition to parliamentary democracy, whereas democracy is supposed to inoculate a nation against the risk of civil war. We present a theory of how the level of violence varies across districts with variations in the distribution of peasants among land tenure categories. Methods. We use district-level data from Nepal and test hypotheses by using negative binominal statistical analysis. Results. Our results indicate that the level of violence varies across districts with variations in land tenure patterns, the level of electoral participation, and the extent of poverty. Conclusions. Our study provides insights into how the concentration of landed resources and political power creates incentives for a landowning coalition that dominated the state to use violence against those segments of the peasantry that have incentives to support an insurgency that promised to redistribute land.

Electoral Participation and Political Context: The Turnout–Marginality Paradox at the 2001 British General Election

Constituency-level analyses of electoral turnout commonly uncover a correlation between the marginality of a seat and the level of electoral participation in the seat: the closer the local contest, the greater the rate of participation in the election. However, repeated efforts to assess the impact of constituency marginality on the propensity of individual electors to participate have met with failure. The 2001 British General Election was no exception to either result. This presence of an ecological aggregate-level relationship which is not replicated at the level of individual voters is paradoxical. However, the paradox can be resolved when two analytical steps are combined. First, nonvoters are classified into two groups according to their reasons for abstention: those who abstain on purpose (‘voluntary abstainers’), and those who fail to vote for reasons largely beyond their control (‘involuntary abstainers’). Second, attention is paid not only to actual marginality but also to perceived marginality. Individuals who think their constituency is competitive are less likely to abstain deliberately than individuals who think their constituency is safe.

When does turnout matter? the case of Poland

THERE ARE TWO CLASSIC REASONS for a concern with electoral turnout. First, a 'top-down' concern centred on legitimacy, authority, governance and ultimately governability. Second, a 'bottom-up' concern about representation, political equality and the 'quality of democracy'. Low levels of electoral participation may erode the legitimacy of a regime, and low levels of electoral participation may lead to an unrepresentative outcome. Both are possible consequences of low turnout, but neither is a necessary consequence. It remains an empirical question whether low turnout does in fact erode legitimacy or produce a distorted outcome. Poland is a particularly interesting case. Brady & Kaplan claim that the Polish double referendum of 1987 'marked the beginning of the end of Communist hegemony in Eastern Europe'.' Ironically, the regime won the referendum by margins that would be beyond the aspirations of politicians operating in most democratic regimes. Solidarity campaigned for a boycott of this referendum-and by today's standards, though not the standards of the 1980s, it failed miserably. Jaruzelski won 64% of the vote on price increases and 69% on political reform-with a turnout rate of over 67% of electors on both questions. But he had set a self-imposed target of gaining the support of 50% of all electors (not voters). So what in any established democracy would have counted as an overwhelming success for the regime was widely interpreted as a 'spectacular defeat for the authorities'2 and contributed to the collapse of the regime. A regime brought down-at least in part-by winning only two-thirds of the vote on a turnout of only two-thirds of electors! Clearly some turnouts matter more than others.

Taming the Tiger: Voting Rights and Political Instability in Latin America

This article discusses the relationship between certain institutional regulations of voting rights and elections, different levels of electoral participation, and the degree of political instability in several Latin American political experiences. A formal model specifies the hypotheses that sudden enlargements of the electorate may provoke high levels of political instability, especially under plurality and other restrictive electoral rules, while gradual enlargements of the electorate may prevent much electoral and political innovation and help stability. Empirical data illustrate these hypotheses. A historical survey identifies different patterns of political instability and stability in different countries and periods, which can be compared with the adoption of different voting rights regulations and electoral rules either encouraging or depressing turnout.

Taming the Tiger: Voting Rights and Political Instability in Latin America

AbstractThis article discusses the relationship between certain institutional regulations of voting rights and elections, different levels of electoral participation, and the degree of political instability in several Latin American political experiences. A formal model specifies the hypotheses that sudden enlargements of the electorate may provoke high levels of political instability, especially under plurality and other restrictive electoral rules, while gradual enlargements of the electorate may prevent much electoral and political innovation and help stability. Empirical data illustrate these hypotheses. A historical survey identifies different patterns of political instability and stability in different countries and periods, which can be compared with the adoption of different voting rights regulations and electoral rules either encouraging or depressing turnout.

Democracy, Development, and the Public Sector

This article develops a model that describes the growth of the public sector as a joint result of the process of economic development and the political institutions in place. The model is tested using panel data for about sixty five developing and developed nations for the period 195090. Economic modernization leads to the growth of the public sector through two mechanisms: first, the state intervenes to provide certain collective goods such as regulatory agencies and infrastructures; second, industrialization and an ageing population translate into higher demands for transfers in the form of unemployment benefits, health insurance, and pensions. Still, the impact of e-conomic development is strongly conditional on the political regime in place as well as on the level of electoral participation. Whereas in a democratic regime, where politicians respond to voters' demands, the public sector grows parallel to the structural changes associated with economic development, in authoritarian countries the size of the public sector remains small. wo stylized facts describe the evolution of the public sector across the world during the last century: first, its steady growth; second, the presence of persistent cross-national differences in its size. Excluding war times, government expenditure remained constant around 10 percent of GDP during the nineteenth century. Yet after 1914 the size of the public sector expanded dramatically. In OECD nations, total current public revenue had risen to 24 percent of GDP in the early 1950s. Thirty years later it had stabilized at around 44 percent. Among developing countries, current public revenue grew from 14 percent of GDP in 1950 to around 27 percent from the late 1970s onward. Despite the steady growth of the public sector, differences across nations have remained substantial. In the mid-1980s, public revenue ranged from less than 10 percent of GDP in Sierra Leone and Paraguay to over 60 percent in Botswana, Kuwait, Reunion, and Sweden. Cross-national variation has become especially acute in the developing world over time. Whereas in the early 1950s the standard deviation of public revenue in non-OECD nations was 4 percent, by the mid1980s it had reached 15 percent of GDP. The growth of the public sector in the last century has spawned a vigorous literature on its causes.1 Three families of explanations stand out. Demand-side explanations, conceiving the government as a provider of public goods, attribute the growth of the public sector either to social progress and demographic transformations (Wagner 1883; Wilensky 1975) or to different rates of productivity growth in the public and private sectors (Baumol 1967). Political or redistributive theories model the government as an agency that, responding to social conflict, redistributes income among citizens (Meltzer and Richards 1981; Esping-Andersen 1990). Finally, institutional models have stressed the impact of different structures of government, such as bureaucracies (Niskanen 1971), the structure of the legislative branch (Shepsle and Weingast 1981) or federalism, on the size of the public sector.

Racial Differences in Self-Reported and Validated Turnout in the 1988 Presidential Election

Our previous analyses of the 1964, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1984, and 1986 vote validation studies questioned the conclusion that low levels of electoral participation by blacks result solely from racial differences in socioeconomic status and because blacks are more likely than whites to live in the South. The 1988 NES vote validation study is used to update our findings, and the results are consistent with our previous analyses. Although controls for region and level of education eliminate racial differences in reported electoral participation, significant racial differences remain when participation is measured by the vote validation procedures. In addition, the 1988 NES survey suggests that racial differences in both reported and validated turnout increased in 1988, and we speculate on the reasons that black turnout declined in the 1988 presidential election.

The Effect of a Black Candidate in Stimulating Voter Participation in Statewide Elections

One issue that has attracted considerable attention in the political science literature concerns the magnitude of difference, if any, in the levels of electoral participation among black and white voters. Much literature assumes that blacks vote in lower proportions than do whites in the United States (Milbrath and Goel, 1977) and that this difference is particularly acute in the South (Matthews and Prothro, 1966). This proposition's validity, based upon data collected in the 1950s and 1960s, has been made questionable, however, by more recent literature examining the black-lag hypothesis. Verba and Nie (1972), for example, found no significant