Levels Of Turnout Research Articles

The tipping point between stability and decline: trends in voter turnout, 1950–1980–2012

There is a consensus in recent literature on electoral research that voter turnout rates are declining significantly. We know less, however, about when this decline started and how significant it is. In this paper, we analyse trends in electoral turnout, as reported in the IDEA dataset for 20 stable democracies over the period between 1950 and 2012, which covers 349 elections. The results show that turnout levels were stable until approximately 1980. A significant linear decline can be observed from 1980 onward. Various institutional elements related to turnout levels – such as the closeness of elections, or the effective number of parties – do not explain this spline or the particular curve of the decline. We close with a number of suggestions for future research that may ascertain this relation in more depth.

A seat-level nowcast of the Front National in the 2017 legislatives

We look to forecast the number of seats the Front National (FN) will win in the 2017 legislative election. We use the most recent subnational ballot, the 2015 regional election, to estimate support for the party, and model reallocation of first-round legislative votes in the second round by applying the pattern seen between the 2011 cantonal and 2012 legislative elections. Using different levels of turnout and four different scenarios of Left-bloc coalition arrangements, both of which strongly influence how the FN performs in run-off ballots, we estimate that a likely, but conservative, scenario would result in 29 FN seats, if a similar pattern to 2011–2012 obtains. This number of seats would allow the FN to form a Parliamentary group in the National Assembly.

La "mobilitazione" personale e la partecipazione alle elezioni regionali in Italia

The decline of voter turnout during regional elections is much greater than at parliamentary elections. According to many scholars, participation in second-order elections – including those for regional institutions – has fallen to a greater extent due to their dependence on a weaker form of mobilisation based on a sense of proximity to political parties and their local organisational structure. In this paper, regional elections are treated as relatively autonomous from other consultations. In fact, alongside more general factors, it is possible to identify specific dynamics which shape the level of voter turnout in regional elections. The principal focus of the paper is on the potential for voter mobilisation expressed by candidates. Political personalisation is analysed with reference to apical figures in the political parties and institutions, as well as other figures that are politically active in intermediate, non-executive roles. Some indicators of "dual personalisation" are identified, the first of which relates to the performance of the presidential candidates, whilst the second involves candidates for the regional assembly. The analysis suggests that the personalisation of presidential elections is positively associated with voter turnout. The paper considers several other factors, which "compete" with political personalisation. Amongst these, a positive association is found between higher levels of electoral participation and the percentage of citizens who participate in the social activities of non-profit-making organisations.

Collective Representation as a Mobilizer: Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Their Intersections at the State Level

AbstractPrior research has found that descriptive representation by race, ethnicity, or gender increases political action, but it has paid less attention to how the intersection of these identities influences participation. We extend this literature by assessing the effects on voter turnout of collective descriptive representation in U.S. state legislatures on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and their intersections. We argue that members of historically excluded groups respond to the overall composition of their state's legislature. We test this proposition in seven elections (2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012). Our results are consistent with the minority empowerment literature, as overall collective representation does substantially increase turnout among previously excluded groups. However, the impact varies intersectionally. For white women, gender trumps race, as higher collective gender representation, regardless of race or ethnicity, increases voter turnout. For African Americans, race trumps gender, as both black men and women respond most consistently to higher levels of collective racial representation. For Latinos, we find less consistent results, but note a collective ethnic turnout effect for 2002 and 2006. We conclude that collective representation, especially at the intersection of identities, is an important factor influencing levels of turnout among previously excluded groups.

Does descriptive representation lead to social desirability bias? Over-reporting of voting among blacks and Latinos in the United States

This study explores whether black and/or Latino respondents are more likely to over-report voting in districts with US House candidates of the same race/ethnicity and whether the overstating of political participation is contingent on shared partisanship between the candidate and the respondent. We test these relationships using vote-validated data from the 2006 and 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. We find that blacks and Latinos are not more likely to over-report voting in districts with descriptive candidates regardless of whether the candidate and respondent share the same party identification or not. The results of this study provide support for previous and future studies linking descriptive representation to higher levels of black and Latino turnout using non-voter validated data.

Factores de mediano y largo plazo para el análisis del proceso electoral de 2014 en Uruguay

This article analyzes the 2014 Uruguayan electoral process, based on the medium and long-term patterns of continuity and change observed in the Uruguayan party system. In the first place, the evolution of the party system in the last 40 years is discussed. This perspective allows to understand the changes and continuities in the distribution of votes among the parties, regarding the 2009 elections. Moreover, it explains which parameters can be associated with the little variations that the October 2014 elections have shown, in comparison to what occurred five years earlier. In the second place, primary party elections are examined in order to analyze the levels of electoral turnout and the difficulties to extrapolate these results to the national election, both between and within parties. Finally, the article explores the institutional factors that determine the characteristics of the legislative supply of the main internal fractions of parties.

Does electoral fraud spread? The expansion of electoral manipulation in Russia

In this paper, we argue that the occurrence of electoral manipulation in Russia has been driven, in part, by diffusion across neighboring raions through emulation, incentives, and networks. Presumably, in Putin’s Russia all local authorities have some incentives to deliver a high number of votes to United Russia, the “party of power”. However, the perceived pressure to deliver ever higher levels of support for Putin’s party arguably increases considerably if one’s raion is located in a region marked by extraordinarily high turnout and high vote share for United Russia. Conversely, the absence of perceived competition to curry executive favor through delivering votes and networks of uncorrupted local authorities, as well as local opposition organizations working to combat electoral fraud, may help explain the absence of fraud among raions located in regions marked by clean elections. Our quantitative analyses suggest that a “neighborhood effect” – the existence of manipulated raions within a region – strongly influences the likelihood that raions are manipulated. Moreover, although results are more mixed, spatial autocorrelation analysis suggests that turnout levels in raions are influenced by the turnout in proximate raions.

The Adoption and Use of Twitter as a Representational Tool among Members of the European Parliament

ABSTRACTMembers of the European Parliament (MEPs) struggle to connect with European publics. Few European Union (EU) citizens feel connected to their MEPs. Levels of turnout for European Parliament (EP) elections are low, and EU citizens rarely retain EP-related news. For these and other reasons, we might expect MEPs to embrace social media platforms, like Twitter, that facilitate interactivity, spontaneity, personality, and informality. In reality, however, significant variation characterizes the timing and nature of MEPs’ engagement with Twitter. In this article, we document and seek to explain elements of this variation. We examine five dimensions of MEP engagement with Twitter: Do MEPs establish Twitter accounts? Are they early adopters? How frequently do they tweet? And how, exactly, do they use Twitter – do they engage in direct conversations via Twitter's @-reply functionality and/or refer followers to other content via retweeting? We find that MEPs’ approaches to Twitter are conditioned by specific personal, constituency-based, and structural/strategic variables. Our findings generate insights into the changing nature of political communication and the diverse patterns of political representation in today's EU.

What's past is prologue, or is it? Generational effects on voter turnout in post-communist countries, 1990–2013

A common theme in studies of voter turnout in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is that the legacy of communism attenuates electoral participation. It is argued that socialization and the political habits that emerged under communism impeded democratic development by not motivating citizen activism. This paper examines this claim for voter turnout in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland for all general elections since 1990 using cohort analysis on pooled crosssectional post-election surveys from given countries. This paper shows that socialization and political habit formation under communism have had no discernible effect on voter turnout in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary between 1990 and 2013. Generational effects are evident in Poland suggesting that this country's political history is qualitatively different from that of its neighbours. This research is important in highlighting that citizens' political development within non-liberal democratic regimes does not always lead to lower levels of voter turnout. Consequently, the decline in turnout in CEE is likely to have attitudinal rather than generational origins where contemporary rather than historical political developments are most important.

Correcting Polling Error in Over-Engaged Samples Using Representative Turnout Weighting

In previous research (Mellon & Prosser, Missing Non-Voters and Misweighted Samples: Explaining the 2015 Great British Polling Miss) we show that the primary cause of the polling miss at the 2015 UK General Election was the undersampling of less politically engaged respondents, particularly non-voters. We show that this problem can partially be corrected after the fact by including turnout as a weighting factor. In this paper we elaborate and extend this method and show that it could be applied prior to an election as well. We do so by estimating the probability of respondents will vote in the election and calibrate the distribution of turnout probabilities so that the expected level of turnout in the sample matches is pegged to that expected in the election. Using data that was available prior to the 2015 election we demonstrate that had this method been applied to the BES Internet Panel survey it would have substantially reduced the level of error in the survey.

Legitimacy and Legitimization in Low Turnout Ballots

Declining voter turnout has been highlighted as problematic for a number of western democracies. However, in this article we argue that whether an election is seen as ‘legitimate’ or not depends crucially upon interpretations of the levels of turnout by elite actors. Through comparing two recent democratic ballots in the UK we demonstrate how elections with lower turnouts can come to be seen as holding more legitimacy than those with higher turnouts. The cases demonstrate, we argue, a distinction between actual legitimacy, defined as a binary concept, and the process of legitimization – a process through which the authority of an institution is discursively constructed and conferred. This suggests a new research agenda which extends beyond the current literature to focus upon how the legitimacy of a ballot is socially constructed in a broader context of unequal socioeconomic power relations.

Populist radical right parties mobilizing ‘the people’? The role of populist radical right success in voter turnout

The increasing popularity of European populist radical right parties (PRRs) has often been argued as either a corrective or threat to democracy. In this study, we provide empirical scrutiny to these opposing claims and investigate the impact of successful PRRs on levels of voter turnout. We argue that the emergence of successful PRRs may either foster voter turnout, because they are passionate mobilizers that fulfill a watchdog function and re-introduce electoral competition; or inhibit voter turnout, because they introduce a more negative, hardened tone to politics that further triggers distrust towards politics, politicians and democracy. To investigate these possibilities, we examine whether various societal groups are affected by the emergence of successful PRRs. Using the six available waves of the European Social Survey for the period 2002–2012, we apply hierarchical fixed effect models to test the (de)mobilization potential of PRRs in 19 Western and 14 Eastern European countries. Our results suggest that the emergence of successful PRRs lowers the voting propensity of Eastern European citizens – in particular the young and those with positive attitudes towards immigrants. Whereas in Western Europe, the emergence of successful PRRs increases the propensity to go to the polls among higher educated, more politically interested citizens. The East European results are consistent with theories that those most likely to be affected by the negative campaigning of PRRs – those that oppose PRR ideology and those less politically experienced – will be less likely to turnout in response to the emergence of a successful PRR. The Western European results are consistent with theories that it is those who strongly oppose PRRs that will be motivated to turnout as a result of the emergence of a successful PRR.

The Cypriot European Elections, May 2014: Dealignment in Process?

The present article analyzes the campaign for the 2014 European elections in the Republic of Cyprus (RoC). In the empirical analysis, party choice and voter turnout are explained as a function of both European and non-EU-related factors. Despite the partial politicization of the EU in the campaign as a result of the severe Eurozone crisis, it is clear that national factors are more important than European factors. The second-order character of the European elections is essentially verified along with an ongoing process of voter dealignment, as indicated by low turnout and low levels of trust in political institutions. These signal important challenges for the political and party system of Cyprus, which may have entered a process of transformation.

Is all campaigning equally positive? The impact of district level campaigning on voter turnout at the 2010 British general election

Comparative literature suggests that campaigning efforts impact positively, both in terms of mobilization and turnout. Effects are not uniform. They may be affected by the electoral system, the electoral circumstances and the effectiveness of party management. Studies of district level (constituency) campaigning in Britain have identified two important trends. First, that effective targeting is a core component of a successful district campaign strategy and that parties have become better at targeting resources. However, a question has arisen as to whether increasingly ruthless partisan targeting by parties could have detrimental effects on overall levels of turnout. Second, they have shown how campaign techniques are continuously being modernized but that more traditional labour-intensive campaigning tends to produce stronger electoral payoffs. This article considers three questions in respect of the impact of district level campaigns on turnout: whether the combined campaign efforts of the three principal parties in Britain are associated with higher levels of turnout; whether the different campaigning styles of parties affect levels of turnout equally; and whether the campaigning efforts of different parties have differential effects on turnout and whether intense partisan targeting impacts upon turnout overall. We show that while campaigning boosts turnout, the impact varies by campaign technique and by party.

When Reports Depress Rather Than Inspire: A Field Experiment Using Age Cohorts as Reference Groups

A large field experiment sent mail to randomly selected low–turnout propensity, young Latino voters in Colorado during the 2008 presidential election. One treatment reported that 90% of young Latinos intended to vote in the election. A second treatment added the fact that only 20% of young Latinos actually voted in 2006. A third treatment provided the additional fact that 40% of older Latinos voted in 2006. Compared to the control group, the treatment reporting low levels of prior turnout decreased participation in the 2008 election. This unintended consequence of the campaign provides evidence of the effectiveness of descriptive social norms for purposes of electoral mobilization.

Comparative Voter Turnout in the Canadian Provinces since 1965: The Importance of Context

The relationship between voter turnout and individual-level determinants are well known. So is the ongoing decline in turnout over time. Yet political participation is also shaped by local factors and election contexts. This is certainly true across the Canadian provinces, where there has been a broad spectrum of turnout levels ranging from Prince Edward Island at the top to Alberta at the bottom. Using data on all 134 provincial elections from 1965 to 2014, we find three additional core determinants of voter turnout across the provinces: the competitiveness and multipartism of their elections, the embeddedness (local identification) of their populations, and the progressiveness of their electorates.

Billboards and Turnout: A Randomized Field Experiment

Scholars argue that mass media appeals and other examples of communications that provide “noticeable reminders” to vote should elevate voter turnout (Dale and Strauss 2009), but a wide range of field experimental studies show that messages delivered via untargeted and impersonal means (such as mass media) are ineffective (Green and Gerber 2008). We test these competing hypotheses in a randomized, mass media field experiment using billboard advertisements to mobilize participation in local elections taking place in November 2007. Despite that outdoor advertising is commonly used in political campaigns to widely reach citizens, no study of which we are aware has experimentally tested the causal effects of billboard advertising on voter turnout. Our findings suggest that billboards are ineffective in generating higher levels of voter turnout. We discuss these results in comparison with other mass media advertisements and other get-out-the-vote methods. Experimental replication and extension is necessary to probe further the impact of outdoor advertising on voting behavior.

Does personalization increase turnout? Spitzenkandidaten in the 2014 European Parliament elections

The 2014 European Parliament elections were the first elections where the major political groups each nominated a lead candidate ( Spitzenkandidat) for the Commission presidency in the hope that this would increase the visibility of the elections and mobilize more citizens to turn out. Using data from the 2014 European Elections Study, an EU-wide post-election survey, we analyse whether and how the presence of the lead candidates influenced the individual probability to participate in these elections. Our findings show that the recognition of the candidates increased the propensity to turn out, even when controlling for a host of other individual-level factors explaining turnout and the context factors known to facilitate participation. Furthermore, the campaign efforts of the lead candidates are associated with higher turnout levels and are reinforced by candidate recognition.

Candidate Race, Partisanship, and Political Participation

A sizable literature in American politics documents increased levels of voter turnout among black citizens when coracial candidates are on the ballot or hold office. However, due to a paucity of black Republican candidates, existing research has been unable to identify whether increased participation occurs irrespective of the candidate’s partisanship. Using data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we find that, while the presence of a black Democratic House candidate was associated with increased black voter turnout, there was no association between black Republican candidates and black turnout. These results are robust to model specification, issues of statistical power, and contextual differences across districts. We report further evidence that black citizens’ perceptions of black candidates’ ideologies and character traits differed substantially based on the candidate’s party. Our results have implications for understanding how citizens engage in politics when salient political identities come into conflict. The results further suggest that Republican efforts to recruit black candidates are unlikely to mobilize black voters.

Revisiting the political life-cycle model: later maturation and turnout decline among young adults

Turnout among young adults has declined steadily in various advanced industrial democracies in recent decades. At the same time, as a consequence of delayed transitions to adulthood, many life-cycle events considered important for the development of electoral participation are experienced later in life. These combined trends call for a revaluation of the political life-cycle model and the way in which it explains voter turnout among young adults. More specifically, in this paper it is argued that variation in the timing of life events has been overlooked as an explanatory factor of generational differences in young adults’ propensity to turn out to vote. With accumulating evidence that the decision to vote is to some extent habitual, a lack of life experiences may cause young adults to form the habit to abstain rather than to vote. If the mechanisms of the life-cycle model are indeed correct, later maturation should at least partially explain why young adults these days are less inclined to vote than their parents or grandparents in their younger years. Based on the British Election Studies from 1964 to 2010, the findings of this study confirm generally observed patterns of a delayed assumption of adult roles by young citizens. This trend toward later maturation negatively affects turnout levels of young citizens. If maturation levels had remained at pre-war levels, the average turnout among Britain’s post-seventies generation would have been no less than 12 percentage points higher.