Variation In Turnout Research Articles

Comparison of turnout in Italian parliamentary elections: a two-stage affinity propagation approach

ABSTRACT This paper presents a methodology for temporal contextual analysis of electoral outcomes in the presence of redistricting. Affinity propagation is used to aggregate electoral districts, thus deriving spatial units comparable over electoral waves. The methodology is based on travel-to-work flows and socio-economic aggregated data. Comparability of clusters enables analyses of electoral trends. A map of electoral turnout variation in Italian parliamentary elections held in 2018 and 2022 illustrates the proposed approach.

External voting in Latin America. Explaining variations in turnout (1990–2017)

The study of turnout of expatriates has aroused early attention in the literature on external voting, given the low generalized participation rates. Although some causes have already been considered, not much progress has been made in theoretically supporting these reasons. At the same time, most are case studies or comparisons between a few cases, with mostly descriptive analysis strategies which do not allow to make causal inferences. In addition, the very few studies of large N cover short periods of time or do not address electoral participation. So, which are the factors that condition emigrants' turnout is a question that still needs to be answered. Drawing on an original data set of 104 elections held between 1990 and 2017 across 15 countries of LA and based on rational choice theory, we compare turnout at the aggregate level seeking to explain its variation among countries and over time, using time series and fixed effects models. The results show that turnout increases with simplified registration procedures, flexible deadlines and in presidential and second-round elections. Likewise, polarization contexts and majority electoral systems reduce the dissuasive effect on participation of non-competitive elections.

Unemployment, workplace socialization, and electoral participation: evidence from Sweden

Abstract How unemployment affects electoral participation is a archetypal question in political sociology and of particular relevance in economic crises; in the 1930s as well as during a pandemic. A frequent argument in the literature is that unemployment leads to political withdrawal as the unemployed have to focus on their economy and other personal matters. Some scholars, on the other hand, reason that unemployment triggers political mobilization through feelings of grievance and a strive to protest against leading politicians. However, existing empirical evidence is mixed and often suffers from limitations in data and research design. To make progress on this difficult empirical question, the present study leverages Swedish register data on turnout, spanning nine elections between 1970 and 2018. This extensive panel dataset enables us to more adequately address the causal status of the relationship by relying on the with-in individual variation in turnout. Our results report significant but modest negative effects of both unemployment in general and of losing a relatively well-paid job (job loss). The effects are driven by the young. We also find that the negative effect is less pronounced for those who have previously worked at a workplace where most colleagues participate, supporting a socialization mechanism.

Does Context Outweigh Individual Characteristics in Driving Voting Behavior? Evidence from Relocations within the United States

We measure the overall influence of contextual versus individual factors (e.g., voting rules and media as opposed to race and education) on voter behavior, and explore underlying mechanisms. Using a US-wide voter-level panel, 2008–2018, we examine voters who relocate across state and county lines, tracking changes in registration, turnout, and party affiliation to estimate location and individual fixed effects in a value-added model. Location explains 37 percent of the cross-state variation in turnout (to 63 percent for individual characteristics) and an only slightly smaller share of variation in party affiliation. Place effects are larger for young and White voters. (JEL D12, D72, I20, J15, L82, R23)

The impact of turnout on partisan bias in U.S. House elections, 1972–2018*

AbstractObjectivePartisan bias occurs when votes are distributed across districts in such a way that even if the vote between two parties were equal, one party would win more seats than the other. Gerrymandering is a well‐established cause of partisan bias, but it is not the only one. In this article, we ask whether the decline of voter turnout can also influence partisan bias.MethodsWe modified the Gelman–King partisan symmetry measure to make it sensitive to turnout differences across U.S. House elections from 1972 to 2018.ResultsWe found that turnout variation has caused partisan bias in U.S. House elections in the Democratic Party's favor since at least 1972, though turnout bias has gotten weaker in recent elections.ConclusionWhile turnout bias can buffer the impact of turnout reductions, it has the potential to dramatically increase the number of seats a party loses when its supporters fail to vote.

Does Context Outweigh Individual Characteristics in Driving Voting Behavior? Evidence from Relocations within the U.S

We measure the overall influence of contextual versus individual factors (e.g., voting rules and media as opposed to race and education) on voter behavior, and explore underlying mechanisms. Using a U.S.-wide voter-level panel, 2008–18, we examine voters who relocate across state and county lines, tracking changes in registration, turnout, and party affiliation to estimate location and individual fixed effects in a value-added model. Location explains 37 percent of the cross-state variation in turnout (to 63 percent for individual characteristics) and an only slightly smaller share of variation in party affiliation. Place effects are larger for young and White voters.

Social Networks, Social Context, and Political Participation: Evidence from Uganda

Citizens often mirror the behavior of their peers, but our understanding of the dynamics of this influence is limited. For example, in what settings does the choice of one person to vote cascade through a community and lead to high voter turnout? Despite substantial theoretical inroads into this question, direct empirical tests remain scarce. Using data on the social networks of 15 villages in rural Uganda, this paper develops theoretical predictions about expected cross-village variation in turnout based on the network structure of each village, and demonstrates that these predictions are tightly linked with actual turnout in low-salience local elections with limited media attention, though not in high-salience presidential elections. These results provide the first direct empirical validation of “social context” theory, and introduce a finding of importance for future empirical network research: the salience of social networks may be conditional on the information environment.

Young people, place and devolved politics: perceived scale(s) of political concerns among under 18s living in Wales

Despite clear linkages between conceptualisations and perceptions of politics, society, culture and territorial rescaling, research into young people’s political engagement, participation and representation is underrepresented in the field of social and cultural geography. Here the gap is addressed using perceptions of devolved politics, as a form of territorial rescaling, among young people living in Wales. Specifically, it shows the geographical scales at which young people locate their political concerns and where responsibility for these concerns is perceived to lie, with a focus on the National Assembly for Wales and the Welsh Government. This is a key contribution to our understanding of the role devolution plays in youth political engagement in the light of the following: the relative infancy of the devolved U.K. institutions; their asymmetrical development and increasing divergences; the growing variation in turnout among young people for different types of election and referenda; and the lack of research examining the youth engagement dimension of Welsh devolution as a political, social and cultural process of territorial rescaling in the U.K. The paper concludes with a critique of the notion that devolution poses a ‘politics of hope’ for youth political engagement in Wales, a very different picture to Scotland.

Information effect on voter turnout: How campaign spending mobilises voters

We explore the impact of campaign effort on constituency-level turnout variation in Britain, under the premise that higher levels of campaign visibility stimulate electoral participation. We focus on the relationship between the competitiveness of the race and campaign effort as a provider of electoral information on the one hand, and voter turnout on the other hand. In doing so, we address the role of campaign effort and competitiveness in shaping turnout both independently as well as jointly. Further to this, we seek to add nuance to our understanding of how electoral campaigns mobilise voters by evaluating the comparative ability of different parties – based on whether or not they are ‘viable’ contenders in a particular constituency – to stimulate turnout. We find evidence that campaign effort mobilises voters and has a significant positive effect on voter turnout; this effect is independent from, and unconditioned by, the competitiveness of the race. However, we do find that this effect is mostly driven by the campaign effort of the ‘viable’ contenders in the constituency.

Yes, structurally low turnout favors the right

ABSTRACTIt is well known that socioeconomically disadvantaged citizens tend to vote less than other citizens. Does this cause democratic politics to systematically favor conservative causes? Surprisingly, the conventional wisdom in a very large scholarly literature says “no.” Whether turnout is high or low, according to numerous studies, makes no substantive difference on political outcomes. This article refutes the scholarly conventional wisdom on theoretical and empirical grounds. It points out that the evidence marshaled in the mainstream turnout debate focuses almost exclusively on partisan vote shares as the dependent variable and “nonstructural” variation in turnout. Unfortunately, many studies do not consider the policy consequences of turnout, a more substantively interesting variable for studying patterns of disadvantage that may result from unequal voting rates. Moreover, conventional research designs do not distinguish between structural changes in turnout caused by legal changes to the voting regime and nonstructural changes precipitated by partisan mobilization, candidate valence, or other election-specific factors. This distinction has substantial implications for understanding turnout's impact. The article employs nonparametric meta-analytic methods to synthesize a large number of empirical studies and demonstrates that low structural turnout does indeed favor the right in theoretically predictable ways.

Regular Voters, Marginal Voters and the Electoral Effects of Turnout

How do marginal voters differ from regular voters? This article develops a method for comparing the partisan preferences of regular voters to those marginal voters whose turnout decisions are influenced by exogenous factors and applies it to two sources of variation in turnout in the United States—weather and election timing. In both cases, marginal voters are over 20 percentage points more supportive of the Democratic Party than regular voters—a significant divide. The findings suggest that the expansion or contraction of the electorate can have important consequences. Moreover, the findings suggest that election results do not always reflect the preferences of the citizenry, because the marginal citizens who may stay home have systematically different preferences than those who participate. Finally, the methods developed in the article may enable future researchers to compare regular and marginal voters on many different dimensions and in many different electoral settings.

Regular Voters, Marginal Voters and the Electoral Effects of Turnout

How do marginal voters differ from regular voters? This article develops a method for comparing the partisan preferences of regular voters to those marginal voters whose turnout decisions are influenced by exogenous factors and applies it to two sources of variation in turnout in the United States—weather and election timing. In both cases, marginal voters are over 20 percentage points more supportive of the Democratic Party than regular voters—a significant divide. The findings suggest that the expansion or contraction of the electorate can have important consequences. Moreover, the findings suggest that election results do not always reflect the preferences of the citizenry, because the marginal citizens who may stay home have systematically different preferences than those who participate. Finally, the methods developed in the article may enable future researchers to compare regular and marginal voters on many different dimensions and in many different electoral settings.

Regular Voters, Marginal Voters and the Electoral Effects of Turnout

How do marginal voters differ from regular voters? This article develops a method for comparing the partisan preferences of regular voters to those marginal voters whose turnout decisions are influenced by exogenous factors and applies it to two sources of variation in turnout in the United States—weather and election timing. In both cases, marginal voters are over 20 percentage points more supportive of the Democratic Party than regular voters—a significant divide. The findings suggest that the expansion or contraction of the electorate can have important consequences. Moreover, the findings suggest that election results do not always reflect the preferences of the citizenry, because the marginal citizens who may stay home have systematically different preferences than those who participate. Finally, the methods developed in the article may enable future researchers to compare regular and marginal voters on many different dimensions and in many different electoral settings.

Do voters count? Institutions, voter turnout, and public goods provision in India

Why do some governments prioritize policies that are welfare-improving for many citizens while others concentrate state resources on improving the lot of only a few individuals? Existing research focuses on institutional factors such as regime type and the structure of party systems, but is largely silent on the role of political participation in shaping governments' spending priorities. This paper leverages variation in turnout across Indian state assembly elections from 1967 to 2004 to identify the conditions under which participation matters for government spending. We find that turnout matters in fragmented party systems but has little impact in states characterized by two-party competition. This result has important implications for theories of democratic politics and public good provision.

INSTITUTIONAL INFLUENCES ON TURNOUT IN MIXED MEMBER ELECTORAL SYSTEMS: AN EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS

What institutional factors influence turnout among mixed member electoral systems? Mixed systems have increased in popularity over the past 20 years, yet no study evaluates variation in turnout within these systems. While the main distinction in mixed systems—MMM versus MMP—is salient regarding other outputs, it remains unclear if this distinction is salient regarding turnout. In addition, debates endure as to how best to measure turnout. Through statistical analysis of an original dataset of all mixed system legislative elections from 1990 to 2010, this article finds that the electoral threshold consistently correlates with an increase in turnout while the sub-type of mixed system does not consistently correlated with turnout. Ultimately this analysis suggests salient differences in both how we measure turnout and the institutional choices within mixed systems.

How Turnout Depends on the Number of Parties: A Logical Model

We illustrate the power of “logical models” (Taagepera, 2007) by offering a three-parameter model of the relationship between the effective number of parties and electoral turnout that makes use of the constraints on what parameter values are internally coherent given boundary conditions to specify functional form, and seeks not optimal curve fitting but rather a direct model testing. In our model, one parameter reflects an effect that generally acts to increase turnout as the effective number of parties increases, another an effect that generally acts to decrease turnout as the effective number of parties increases, while a third parameter allows for baseline variation in turnout across countries (or within countries across elections). We fit this model to district-level data from 237 elections held in 17 countries, representing a wide range of electoral system types generating multi-party contests, with over 20,000 district-election observations. The basic intuition, that turnout rises to a peak as the effective number of parties increases and then falls slowly, fits our data pretty well.

A mixed blessing for the left? Early voting, turnout and election outcomes in Norway

Is there a relationship between turnout and election outcomes? Although this is a classic topic in political science, most studies on multiparty systems have important theoretical and empirical shortcomings. First, we argue that the proper implication of the theoretical argument that underpins research on the turnout-vote nexus is that high levels of turnout should typically benefit both traditional social democratic parties and parties of the radical right relative to other types of parties, including not only those of the traditional right, but also ‘left-libertarian’ parties. Second, few have studied the relationship between turnout and election outcomes with a research design that is appropriate for causal inference. In our empirical study, our identification strategy is to exploit a Norwegian reform of early voting rules as an exogenous source of variation in turnout. Our theoretical expectations are largely borne out in our empirical results.

Corporate citizens and the UN Global Compact: explaining cross-national variations in turnout

Business and public partnerships in socially responsible behavior have become a central pillar of global governance, but one that is unevenly developed in different countries. Despite the transnational character of business operations, national context is of theoretical as well as policy significance. To explain cross-country variation in corporate commitment to social responsibility we investigate the political conditions that encourage firms to participate in the United Nations Global Compact. Drawing on a theory of corporate social responsibility as motivated by self-interest and external pressure, we examine the influence of external actors and the locally specific mobilization of bias. Analyzing participation levels in 145 countries, we find that a democratic regime and Global Compact participation by countervailing groups are associated with higher levels of business participation in the program. Contrary to earlier studies relying on smaller numbers of countries, we find no evidence that a country's relationship with the UN or the domestic political strength of environmental interests account for cross-national variation in corporate engagement with the Global Compact.

Candidate Genes and Voter Turnout: Further Evidence on the Role of 5-HTTLPR

Recently in this journal, Charney and English (2012) presented an extensive critique of candidate gene association studies using the widely noted Fowler and Dawes (2008) article on the relationship between self-reported voter turnout and both 5-HTT (serotonin transporter) and MAOA (monoamine oxidase A) as the driving example of their evaluation. Reanalysis of the Fowler and Dawes data by Charney and English, based on four critiques of candidate gene studies, led to the conclusion that neither polymorphism is related to variations in turnout. We add to this empirical debate by conducting an independent test using an original dataset containing 5-HTT data and two separate participation variables: self-reported participation and actual voting records. Our results confirm the original conclusions by Fowler and Dawes on 5-HTT, but also support several of the critiques suggested by Charney and English. We conclude by offering suggestions for the way candidate gene association studies should be interpreted by the discipline and processed by journal editors.

Correcting mistakes: cognitive dissonance and political attitudes in Sweden and the United States

Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that the act of voting makes people morepositive toward the party or candidate they have voted for. Following Mullainathan and Washington (2009), I test this prediction by using exogenous variation in turnout provided by the voting age restriction. I improve on previous studies by investigating political attitudes, measured just before elections, when they are highly predictive of voting. In contrast to earlier studies I find no effect of voting on political attitudes. This result holds for a variety of political attitudes and for both Sweden and the United States.