Differences In Turnout Research Articles

Local Democracy in America: How Access, Competition, and Place Shape Turnout in Mayoral Races

The vast majority of the roughly half-million elected officials in the U.S. occupy local offices, however, research examining how they get elected to remains scant. The present study examines turnout in local elections, focusing on the effects of electoral rules, the competitiveness of local races, and whether and how place matters. Based on a sample of roughly 10,000 mayoral elections, this study represents the most systematic empirical analysis of local turnout to date. While we find substantial differences in turnout across rural towns, suburbs, and central cities, these differences are largely explained by electoral and contextual factors that are unevenly distributed across the local landscape. Though election timing is far and away the most important factor, uncontested mayoral races, local elections in states with restrictive voting laws as well as those mid-sized municipalities are associated with significantly lower turnout.

Local passion and national apathy: investigating the phenomenon of selective voting behaviour

ABSTRACT Although there is a substantial difference in turnout between local and national elections, a significant number of citizens are locally mobilised yet they do not vote in national elections. While some previous studies have predominantly attributed this pattern to a municipal size, this study ascertains that locally bound motives and attitudinal factors also exert influence, independent of the municipality size. The research reveals that citizens who report personal acquaintance with local councillors also express an overall satisfaction with the local election outcomes and perceive a notable change in council politics are more inclined to vote only in local elections. Although displaying lower support of central government, these locally mobilised citizens exhibit greater satisfaction with the state of democracy and local political dynamics in comparison to non-voters. Consequently, these significant findings offer an optimistic outlook from a democratic theory perspective.

Differences in Voter Turnout Across Diverse Asian Ethnic Groups in a Western Democracy: Findings from a New Zealand National Sample

ABSTRACT Many Western governments frame lower Asian voter turnout as a concern that impacts the quality of democracy and representation. However, there is limited evidence on how turnout varies across different ethnic groups under the ‘Asian’ classification, and what the correlates of turnout among Asian subgroups are. This study provides a comprehensive account of the demographic, socioeconomic, social, political, and psychological factors driving Asian voter turnout in an underexplored, Western English-speaking democracy (New Zealand). It uses the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (N = 47,951), a national probability survey, to explore these differences in turnout for Asians (n = 2,445) in the 2017 national election. The analysis shows that Asian New Zealanders have a relatively low voter turnout and that their voting probabilities are significantly influenced by immigration status, social network, and political psychological factors. Furthermore, the results for different Asian ethnic groups can have different relationships between these factors and turnout compared to the Asian group at large. These findings highlight the importance of considering the needs of different Asian communities when developing policies and campaigns to boost their turnout in Western democracies.

The gender gap in voter turnout: An artefact of men’s over-reporting in survey research?

Is there a gender gap in voting? Most cross-national survey research on gender inequalities in voter turnout finds that men have a higher probability to vote than women. Yet, some studies using validated turnout data shed some doubt on this finding. We revisit the question of a gender gap in voting using official records. In more detail, we compare the gender gap in turnout between survey data and official electoral figures across 73 elections. Our results highlight that in surveys, men still report higher turnout in most countries. However, official electoral figures reveal contrasting trends: across countries, women are, on average, more likely to vote. We also test two explanations for this difference in turnout between official figures and surveys: (1) men over-report voting more than women and (2) the survey samples of men and women are different. We find some, albeit very moderate, evidence for the first explanation and no support for the second explanation. All in all, our research nevertheless suggests that scholars should be careful in using surveys to detect gender differences in voting.

The Loma Prieta earthquake and the cost of voting in the 1989 San Francisco municipal election: Evidence from a natural experiment

On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the central coast of California. Three weeks later, on November 7, 1989, San Francisco held a municipal election. A dozen polling places had been destroyed or were otherwise inaccessible to the public due to the earthquake, so new polling places were selected for the affected precincts in the days leading up to the election. This case represents a credible natural experiment examining how changes in the costs of voting affect political participation, with the “as-if” random assignment of voters to the treatment group determined by earthquake damage to individual buildings rather than election administration decisions which could conceivably be related to turnout, such as precinct consolidation or the location of precinct boundaries. We use a difference-in-differences design, with the difference in turnout between the 1987 and 1989 municipal elections as the outcome variable. We find that voter turnout was 2.9 [5.1, 0.6] percentage points lower in precincts in which the polling place was relocated due to earthquake damage as compared to precincts that kept their original polling place.

Birth Order and Voter Turnout

AbstractPrevious studies have stressed the role of a child's family environment for future political participation. This field of research has, however, overlooked that children within the same family have different experiences depending on their birth order. First-borns spend their first years of life without having to compete over their parents' attention and resources, while their younger siblings are born into potential rivalry. We examine differences in turnout depending on birth order, using unique population-wide individual level register data from Sweden and Norway that enables precise within-family estimates. We consistently find that higher birth order entails lower turnout, and that the turnout differential with respect to birth order is stronger when turnout is lower. The link between birth order and turnout holds when we use data from four other, non-Nordic countries. This birth order effect appears to be partly mediated by socio-economic position and attitudinal predispositions.

Registration costs and voter turnout

We exploit a natural experiment in Massachusetts in 2012 to estimate the causal effect of lowering voter information and registration costs on: voter registration, turnout and voting behavior in presidential elections. Both a within-Massachusetts specification and a cross-state specification (utilizing Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire data) show a statistically significant effect on voter registration and turnout that is of a material magnitude. However, conditional on registration we find no material difference in turnout. Finally, we find a large treatment effect on Democrat voteshare. Our results highlight the importance of voter registration and information costs for electoral participation, especially for citizens from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

How Settlement Locations and Local Networks Influence Immigrant Political Integration

AbstractTo what extent do early experiences in the host country shape the political integration of immigrants? We argue that the initial neighborhoods immigrants settle in establish patterns of behavior that influence subsequent political participation. Using Norwegian administrative register data, we leverage quasi‐exogenous variation in the placement of refugees to assess the consequences of assignment to particular neighborhoods. We find that the difference in turnout between refugees initially placed in 20th and 80th percentile neighborhoods is 12.6 percentage points, which represents 47% of the participation gap between refugees and residents. To assess the mechanism, we draw on individual‐level data on all neighbors present at the time of each refugee's arrival and then evaluate the relative impact of neighborhood characteristics and available social networks. Our findings suggest that while neighborhood socioeconomic factors play a limited role, early exposure to politically engaged neighbors and peer cohorts increases immigrants' turnout over the long run.

Who Votes More Strategically?

Strategic voting is an important explanation for aggregate political phenomena, but we know little about how strategic voting varies across types of voters. Are richer voters more strategic than poorer voters? Does strategic behavior vary with age, education, gender, or political leaning? The answers may be important for assessing how well an electoral system represents different preferences in society. We introduce a new approach to measuring and comparing strategic voting across voters that can be broadly applied, given appropriate survey data. In recent British elections, we find that older voters vote more strategically than younger voters and that richer voters vote more strategically than poorer voters, even as strategic behavior varies little across the education level. The differences in strategic voting by age and income are smaller than observed differences in turnout by age and income, but they tend to exacerbate these better-known inequalities in political participation.

Explaining Gender Differences in Turnout Using Panel Data Across Elections

ObjectivesThe current study offers the first systematic analysis of the impact of citizens’ interest in and perceptions of specific elections on gender differences in turnout.MethodsUsing an Internet panel survey conducted by the Making Electoral Democracy Work project covering the 2013 state, 2013 federal, and 2014 European elections in Bavaria (Germany), our probit models examine mediation and moderation effects of three election‐related characteristics: the issues that citizens consider most central in the elections, citizens’ interest in the elections, and the perceived influence among citizens of the policies of the different levels of policy making on their well‐being.ResultsThe results indicate an overall gender difference in turnout in Bavaria with women being less likely to vote compared with men. Yet, this gender effect ceases to be significant once citizens’ attitudes toward and perceptions of specific elections are controlled for. Interest in the election at hand has a particularly strong and positive effect on the likelihood of voting. We find no significant gender interactions.ConclusionCitizens' interest in and perceptions of specific elections have a strong impact on turnout and gender differences therein.

Do Surveys Overestimate or Underestimate Socioeconomic Differences in Voter Turnout? Evidence from Administrative Registers

AbstractSurveys generally overestimate the overall level of voter turnout in elections due to both the misreporting of voting and nonresponse. It is sometimes argued that socioeconomic differences in turnout are exaggerated in surveys because social desirability has a more pronounced effect on eligible voters in more advantaged socioeconomic positions. However, the contribution of nonresponse bias has not been taken into consideration in these assessments. Using a register-linked survey with information on the education, occupational social class, income, and voting in the 2015 Finnish parliamentary elections of both respondents and nonrespondents, this study shows that nonresponse bias leads to not only a larger overestimation of the overall level of turnout than social desirability, but also an underestimation of educational, social class, and income-related differences in the propensity to vote. Socioeconomic differences in the probability of voting in register-based data were at least two-thirds larger than differences obtained when using standard survey techniques. This finding implies that socioeconomic inequality in electoral participation is a more pressing social problem than previous evidence might indicate.

Turnout among non-western immigrants

Electoral turnout among non-western immigrants is substantially lower than among ethnic Danes. How much of the difference in turnout is simply due to different demographic compositions of the two groups? In the 2013 Danish municipal election, first-generation non-western immigrants voted 31 percentage points less than ethnic Danes, even when demographic composition is taken into consideration. Second-generation non-western immigrants voted 4 percentage points less than the first generation when demographic composition is not considered, but 7 percentage points more under control for the two groups’ different demographic composition. The gap in turnout between second-generation non-western immigrants and ethnic Danes shrinks when demographic composition is considered, but the group still lags 24 percentage points behind. Danish citizens turn out more than non-Danish citizens, but we do not find strong evidence of an effect of becoming a citizen when we try to identify the independent effect of this factor. The analysis indicates that the process up to becoming a citizen increases turnout at the municipal election, but that this effect disappears when citizenship is obtained. However, there is a need for more studies in the area.

Voting while ailing? The effect of voter facilitation instruments on health-related differences in turnout

ABSTRACTSeveral studies suggest that people suffering from ill health or disabilities have a lower propensity to vote. Using six rounds of the European Social Survey, we examine whether the effect of health or functional disabilities on electoral participation is less or more pronounced in countries which utilize a wider range of facilitation instruments, such as advance or postal voting, proxy voting and voting outside the polling stations. Our findings show that with the exception of proxy voting, voter facilitation instruments not only have insignificant main effects but also a negative interaction effect with poor health/functional ability (FA). As a result, voter facilitation intensifies the health-related differences but not by activating those who are more active to begin with, as suggested in previous studies. The endogeneity argument thus seems most warranted explanation for our findings: countries with low turnout among people with impaired FA or health are more likely to adapt facilitation practices.

A field experiment shows that subtle linguistic cues might not affect voter behavior

One of the most important recent developments in social psychology is the discovery of minor interventions that have large and enduring effects on behavior. A leading example of this class of results is in the work by Bryan et al. [Bryan CJ, Walton GM, Rogers T, Dweck CS (2011) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108(31):12653-12656], which shows that administering a set of survey items worded so that subjects think of themselves as voters (noun treatment) rather than as voting (verb treatment) substantially increases political participation (voter turnout) among subjects. We revisit these experiments by replicating and extending their research design in a large-scale field experiment. In contrast to the 11 to 14% point greater turnout among those exposed to the noun rather than the verb treatment reported in the work by Bryan et al., we find no statistically significant difference in turnout between the noun and verb treatments (the point estimate of the difference is approximately zero). Furthermore, when we benchmark these treatments against a standard get out the vote message, we estimate that both are less effective at increasing turnout than a much shorter basic mobilization message. In our conclusion, we detail how our study differs from the work by Bryan et al. and discuss how our results might be interpreted.

Class (Non)Voting in Switzerland 1971‐2011: Ruptures and Continuities in a Changing Political Landscape

AbstractThis article deals with the evolution of class voting in Switzerland from 1971 to 2011. It shows that class cleavage (working class versus owners/employers) has weakened in Switzerland. The existence of a large right‐wing party with strong support among the working class contributes to blurring the traditional class divisions in voting. However, the analysis indicates that class cleavage has not completely disappeared. The centre‐right parties display much continuity in their class basis over time, thus contributing to the persistence of class cleavage. Besides taking into account the diversity of the right‐wing parties, the article also offers a new perspective by including nonvoting. Class differences in turnout are important in Switzerland, but the findings suggest that the most important change over time concerns party choice and not turnout.

Who Votes Early? Evidence from Canada, Germany, Spain and Switzerland

In an era of declining voter turnout, many election administrators are turning to increased opportunities for advance voting. They posit that by providing voters with a variety of options of dates and times when they can vote in-person at a polling station, those who are busy or unable to vote on election day will have a more convenient way of casting their vote before the election. One concern, however, is that those using advance polls simply have the characteristics of those who most frequently vote anyway. If this is the case, rather than increasing turnout, advance polls simply provide more convenience to those who already vote. This study therefore employs a cross-national statistical analysis of six established democracies to better understand the socio-demographic and attitudinal correlates of advance voting. As such, this research will contribute to our understanding of whether advance voting actually helps reduce socio-demographic differences in turnout.

Abstención diferencial en Cataluña y en la Comunidad de Madrid: explicación sociopolítica de un fenómeno urbano

La abstención diferencial entre elecciones generales y autonómicas enEspaña presenta dos características recurrentes: es más elevada en lascomunidades autónomas de Cataluña y de Madrid, y tiende a concentrarseen las áreas metropolitanas de las ciudades de Barcelona y Madrid. ¿Quépuede explicar estas dos pautas territoriales? A los intentos de explicacióndel fenómeno, aportamos en este artículo nuevos elementos utilizando datoscensales a nivel de sección. La principal conclusión es que la desmovilizaciónregistrada en estas elecciones se relaciona con algunos rasgos de laestructura sociodemográfica de las áreas metropolitanas de ambascomunidades: mayor presencia de electorado joven, mayor desempleo ymayor porcentaje de electores no nacidos en la comunidad autónoma. Porotro lado, un factor político como es la implantación electoral socialistaaparece también como elemento significativo para explicar los diferencialesde abstención. La combinación de los elementos citados permite dar unaimagen más clara de quién deja de votar en estas elecciones autonómicas yproporciona nuevas pistas para construir una explicación más general delfenómeno de la llamada abstención diferencial.

Different Surveys, Different Results? A Comparison of Two Surveys on the 2009 European Parliamentary Election

The European Election Survey (EES) is carried out in all member states at the time of each European Parliament election. The mode of data collection (mainly telephone interviews) and the sampling procedure (achieving 1,000 interviews in each country) raise doubts about the data quality. Until now knowledge has been lacking about the extent to which the mode of data collection and the sampling procedure bias the results. In one European country an independently designed election survey is carried out: The Swedish National European Parliament Election Study (SNES). The survey consists of face-to-face interviews of a random net sample of 2,682 individuals (response rate 67 per cent compared to 11.2 in the Swedish EES survey). In addition, SNES includes a large number of variables from official register data (including validated voting) that facilitates analyses without any non-responses generating missing data. This quasi-experimental methodological set up is used to compare the data from the two surveys for voter turnout, left–right placement and party choice. Results show that EES overestimates turnout levels more than SNES. EES also has a large overrepresentation of highly educated respondents, and thus underestimates differences in turnout between highly and less educated citizens. As for left–right placement, respondents in EES place both themselves and the parties on more extreme positions. Regarding party choice, the main difference between the surveys is that the EES largely underestimates the share of Social Democratic voters.

Media Preferences and Democracy: Refining the “Relative Entertainment Preference” Hypothesis

This article extends the work of research connecting media choice and relative preferences for entertainment to voter turnout. Markus Prior found that individuals who both preferred entertaining content to news and had either cable or Internet access were less likely to vote than were other citizens. As an update to his work, this article uses more recent Pew Research Center for the People and the Press surveys to test alternative measures of entertainment preferences and to update the Internet access findings for the broadband age. As a theoretical extension, this article looks at turnout differences among those with even finer content preferences. Specifically, people who prefer hard news are compared to those choosing societal welfare news (e.g., crime, community, health). The results indicate that there is value in considering Relative Societal Welfare News Preference in addition to—or even instead of—entertainment preferences alone.

The effect of generation and age on turnout to the European Parliament – How turnout will continue to decline in the future

Electoral turnout has been declining at national elections in almost all Western democracies. European Parliament (EP) elections have followed the same trend. We utilize a previously suggested method for separating the effect of generation, age and period and show that a major part of the decline can be attributed to the difference in turnout between pre- and post-baby-boomer generations though there are substantial differences across countries. Age has a curvilinear effect on turnout even when generation is taken into account, but the age composition has remained relatively stable over time. We utilize the estimated coefficients to predict future changes in turnout as a result of the expected shifts in the generational and age compositions over the next 30 years. The results point to a continued decline in turnout to EP elections – especially between the years of 2020 and 2040.