Voter Turnout Research Articles

Democracy for the Few

A review and application of Degenerations of Democracy, by Craig Calhoun, Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, and Charles Taylor (hereafter, CGT); Liberalism and Its Discontents, by Francis Fukuyama; and How Democracies Live, by Stein Ringen. A strengthened liberal democratic culture is essential for the health and vitality of democracy. This culture is made up of three components: a cluster of liberal values (rule of law, freedom, equality, and reason), a democratic governing system grounded in popular sovereignty, and a collective experience of shared respect for liberal values and democratic institutions. Has this culture lost its strength? Is the collective experience and belief in democratic legitimacy disappearing? Are liberal values increasingly contested? All of the theorists under review address these questions. And for all, the answer is “yes, but….” They make strikingly similar arguments about the sources of this culture’s strength, the causes of its current weakness, and how it can be strengthened. The general thrust of these books is this: a strong liberal democracy rests on three cultural foundations: the strength of social bonds, the level of deliberative civil discourse, and the level of economic equality. The main challenge to this threefold foundation’s strength is neoliberalism, which all authors agree has led to liberal democracy’s decline. I draw on this argument as a guide to assess the strength of liberal democracy in a small population living in rural Alpine County, California. I find that although it is relatively small and isolated, the drivers of democratic decline have found their way into this tiny community. Some aspects of liberal democratic culture have remained strong (voter turnout and volunteerism are high, and many citizens serve in elected office and on government committees); others, however, have weak roots that were never cultivated and continue to weaken further (equality, inclusion, open debate). Finally, I suggest that to strengthen liberal democracy, citizens must participate in it and leaders must work for the good of the entire community, not just the few.

Implications of the Dynamic Capability of Thinking Again, the General Election Commission's (KPU) Rumah Pintar Pemilu (RPP) Program in Voter Participation in 2018 Elections

Anticipating the low voter participation in elections, the General Elections Commission (KPU) of the Republic of Indonesia initiated a political education program for voters to increase voter participation by making a pilot project for the establishment of the Election Rumah Pintar Pemilu (RPP) with a target of 549 houses to be built including one in the central KPU, 34 RPP in provinces, and the rest in districts/cities throughout Indonesia. People, on the other hand, are more interested in learning about the election through other media rather than visiting the election smart house. How the implications of the dynamic capability of the smart home election program think again in increasing voter participation in the 2018 regional head election is interesting to examine using a case study method involving informants from the Public Relations and Technical Division of the Indonesian KPU and Regional KPU. The results showed that the implementation of the provision of RPP KPU RI throughout Indonesia starting from 2015 to 2018 had reached 514 RPP at the provincial, city, and district levels. Of the 8 RPPs that were observed directly, starting from the RPP KPU RI, RPP KPU Serang City, Lebak Regency, North Sumatra Province, Bogor City, Garut Regency and East Lombok Regency, and East Barito Regency RPP. Only the RPP of the KPU RI and the City of Bogor have sufficient complete facilities, while the 5 RPPs are still not in accordance with the standards of the Guidelines for the Provision of the KPU RI. In providing the RPP, the Indonesian KPU carried out top-down communication through official letters and meetings with the regional KPU in 2015, which was then realized in its establishment from 2016 to 2018 using the RI KPU budget taken from the voter education budget. The difficulty in providing KPU’s RPP is that the KPU building or office is borrowed from the local government, and there is no special staff for the regional KPU to handle the RPP and the activities in it. Willingness and skills of implementers who do not understand politics, democracy and voter education, and the bureaucratic structure in regional KPUs do not support the RPP as a means of voter education and as an effort to increase the number of voter participation in the 2018 direct regional head elections so that voter participation does not reach the target of the KPU RI. In the 2018 Pilkada, which had a target voter turnout of 77.5%; however, participation was only 73.24%. At 2015 regional election participation rate was 69%. The implementation of the election smart home program needs to be evaluated thoroughly because the amount of support issued does not increase voter participation and intelligence.
 Keywords: implications, election smart house, participation, voters

Political equality in unequal territories: the impact of territorial inequalities on voter turnout in Italy’s regional elections

ABSTRACT This study investigates how disparities in the distribution of economic, social, and institutional capital across territories affect voter turnout. Analysis of Italian regional elections held from 2003 to 2021 reveals that electoral participation is higher in more economically developed regions than in less developed ones. However, the effect of economic conditions becomes more tangible in territories featuring high levels of social interconnectedness, whilst the institutional capital does not have a significant effect on electoral participation. By showing that voter turnout depends on the interaction between social and economic factors, this study indicates the need for a holistic approach to encouraging political participation, combining long and short-term strategies addressing territories’ societal and economic assets. Another important implication of this article is that ‘context matters’ also at the subnational level. This suggests that future work on turnout should rely more on comparisons across territories within countries.

Mobile Internet access and political outcomes: Evidence from South Africa

I exploit the staggered introduction of 3G mobile Internet technology across South Africa to estimate its impact on political participation, electoral competition, voters’ preferences, and protests. Combining granular coverage data with administrative records on municipal elections, I show that in 2016 mobile Internet availability caused a 2-percentage-point increase in voter turnout and a 3-percentage-point reduction in the vote share of the ruling party. The main opponents gained from mobile Internet arrival. The number of parties running for election and the number of protests grew. I provide suggestive evidence that both information and coordination mechanisms could explain the observed results.

Process matters: the variegated effects of municipal amalgamation features on voter turnout revealed in a 10-country comparative investigation

AbstractMost literature finds a detrimental effect of amalgamation on voter turnout in municipal elections. Some other studies reveal instead null or even positive effects. We argue that this inconsistency derives from the fact that previous research has only analysed the amalgamation/turnout relation in single case studies. The contribution of this article is therefore twofold. First, it proposes a unified framework to investigate the amalgamation/turnout relation in comparative perspective, which clarifies the shortcut between size and amalgamation, disentangles the multifaced nature of municipal amalgamation, and outlines clear testable hypotheses related to its implementation – both at the national and at the local level. Secondly, it provides an original 10-European-country dataset of municipal amalgamations in the last decades (comprising Albania, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway) to empirically verify such hypotheses concerning the effects of the amalgamation features on voter turnout. Our study crucially reveals the relevance of the characteristics of the amalgamation process. When the amalgamation is imposed by the national government, turnout is particularly low, similarly to when the amalgamation occurs independently from a wide reform scheme. On the other hand, municipal turnout after amalgamation is higher when a larger number of municipalities are merged and when the amalgamated municipalities had a similar population before being merged. Moreover, our empirical evidence confirms the importance of traditional second-order predictors of turnout in municipal elections, even with specific reference to the post-amalgamation elections. Conversely, in such elections, the overall size of the (final) municipality is not a significant predictor of voter turnout.

Different Voting Behavior in National and Local Elections: Analysis of Voter Turnout in Concurrent Elections

Different Voting Behavior in National and Local Elections: Analysis of Voter Turnout in Concurrent Elections

Организационно-правовые основы повышения явки электората

Introduction. The paper discusses some problematic aspects of the elections, which entail a low turnout of the electorate. The data analysis of the voter turnout in 2021 is carried out, and the peculiarities of implementing the electoral right in the conditions of the digital transformation of society and the system of remote electronic voting are investigated. The purpose is to analyze the problematic aspects of the procedure for the elections and propose ways to improve the electoral legislation and law enforcement practice. Materials and methods. The authors have studied the social relations that develop in the process of organizing and conducting elections using the statistical data of the non-governmental analytical organization “Levada-Center” (recognized as a foreign agent). The methodological framework for the research comprises the general scientific and special methods of cognition: dialectical, comparative legal, formal logical (analysis and synthesis), as well as the statistical method. Results. The circumstances contributing to an increase in the electorate’s turnout, as well as increasing the confidence of citizens in remote electronic voting, are identified. Discussion and conclusion. Some scientific and methodological recommendations for improving the organizational and legal fundamentals in the field of constitutional law implementation are proposed.

Do Voting Advice Applications Change Political Behavior?

We analyze how the introduction of the voting advice application smartvote in Switzerland affects voter turnout, voting behavior, and electoral outcomes. The Swiss context offers an ideal setting to identify the causal effects of voting advice applications using real-world aggregate data because smartvote was introduced in different cantons at different points in time. We find that smartvote does not affect turnout but that voters more actively select candidates instead of parties by splitting their ballot. Our findings suggest that no specific party seems to benefit from the change in voting behavior.

Constructing Democracy: The Underlying Factors That Create a Healthy Democracy

Objective: This paper seeks to analyze how three different factors affect the health of a democracy: voter turnout, electoral system, and election management body. Background: While extensive literature discusses voting’s impacts on policy, little literature specifically correlates it with democratic health. For years, scholars have debated the merits of various electoral systems, especially regarding the structure of new democracies in Africa and Asia. Most scholars agree that there is not one particular system that is universally advantageous over the rest; instead, the optimal system depends on the country in question and the specific goals and criteria. This paper will analyze 9 main electoral systems (Table 1) and their impacts on the health of democracy. Election Management Bodies (EMBS) manage the operations of an election. The 3 main types are Governmental, Independent, and Mixed. Methods: Various datasets from International IDEA, are used to achieve the objective of this paper. For each main question, boxplots are generated to visualize the distribution of democratic health across the categories. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is used to determine whether any statistically significant differences exist. Results: The first ANOVA model reveals that nations with a high health of democracy have a greater average voter turnout than those with medium health of democracy, and likewise for medium and low. Furthermore, a statistically significant difference exists between List PR and TRS regarding their impacts on a democracy’s health. Finally, Governmental EMBs are associated with high-performing democracies, while Independent EMBs are dominant in Authoritarian regimes. This is statistically significant.

Political Alienation and Electoral Participation in Nigeria's Democratization Process:A Survey of Voter Behavior in the 2019 General Elections

The attainment of adequate electoral participation in a democratic setting is essential to maintain legitimacy, credibility, and stability since democracy is about popular representation. However, from available data worldwide, voter participation is gradually on the decline. The study aimed to ascertain the reasons, nature and implication of voter abstention for Nigeria’s democratic development. This study thus surveyed the perceptions of Nigerians on the factors influencing low-level participation of eligible voters in the Nigerian electoral process. The study adopted the mixed model research design. A sample of 1,200 respondents was chosen from the selected local government areas of the six zones using the stratified random sampling technique. The simple percentages and Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient statistical technique were used to test and determine the degree of association intrinsic in the stated research questions for the quantitative data. The descriptive-analytical technique was adopted to analyze the qualitative aspect of the data. The findings from the study showed that the failure of elected political officers to fulfill electoral promises, electoral fraud, and violence, are responsible for voter alienation in Nigeria. Consequently, the following suggestions are made: The elected political officials should ensure good governance based on meeting the needs of the citizenry; fraudulent practices during elections should be penalized with appropriate sanctions and the governments at all levels should put on modalities to mitigate the incidences of violence during elections. Achieving a credible, free, fair and effective electoral process would, therefore, require the partnership of all stakeholders in the Nigerian democratic project.

The Legislature and Political Development: A Comparison between Korea and Mongolia

In a democratic system, parliament is, on one hand, a representative institution of the people and, on the other hand, exists with a status of a political institution as a policy-making and law-making body. It is guaranteed by the Constitution. In addition legislature serves for political systems actively and becomes its dynamic expression. Parliamentary institution plays a tremendous role in and influences heavily on the political development. In this work, first, the author will consider general overview of constitutional systems of two countries. Then the author will discuss about the role and the status of parliament in the political system from their historical and functional sides, providing it with some patterns of the legislative institution. Moreover, electoral system and last election results, political parties’ seat ratio in parliament and the level of the voter turnout or citizen participation in the elections will be introduced here as well. Finally, it will cover the issues of the legislature’s effects in the political development and the process of strengthening of democracy and, furthermore, what potentials it will contain in further democratic process.

The role of community-based democracy volunteers in increasing the voter participation in general elections

Voter participation in general elections is one of the challenges for general election organizers. Various attempts were made to increase voter participation in every general election. This study aims to identify the role of community-based democracy volunteers in increasing the voter participation, analyzing the increase in voter participation, and analyzing the obstacles that affect the implementation of community based democracy volunteer activities in 2019 in Pekalongan City. This research is a descriptive study with a qualitative approach case study toward The General Elections Commission of Pekalongan City. The results suggested that the role of community-based democracy volunteers in increasing voter participation was manifested through the socialization of elections to the community, considering the large number of communities in Pekalongan and the members who were also voters in the 2019 election. The socialization carried out by community-based democracy volunteers in Pekalongan greatly influenced the increase in voter turnout in the 2019 elections which reached 84%. The obstacles occurred during socialization by community-based democracy volunteers could be properly resolved. Community-based democracy volunteers have a very important role in increasing voter participation in elections through socialization activities carried out.

Genopolitics: A New Approach in Political Behavior

This study is about the influence of genes on political attitudes and behavior in the subfield of biopolitics. Genopolitics arose as a critique of the political science approach which was deemed insufficient to explain political attitudes and behavior both theoretically and methodologically. To find the origins of political attitudes and behavior, interdisciplinary studies are needed. It is genes that can explain the origin of individual preferences on which all rational choices are based. The method used in this study was a literature review to see the development of genopolitics, debates, and criticisms related to political attitudes and behavior from the point of view of political science and genopolitics. The literature used was derived from books, journals, magazines, and news on the internet. Regarding voter turnout, 32 different social factors can only be explained by 31% by differences in political behavior, while the remaining 69% of differences can be explained by genetic differences. This study concludes that genopolitics as a new approach used to see political attitudes and behavior can be applied in Indonesia to answer and complete the survey-based study of political behavior.

Happy birthday: you get to vote!

AbstractThis paper estimates the effect of automatic voter registration (AVR) on voter turnout in California and Oregon. AVR systems register to vote all eligible individuals who transact with proscribed government agencies, most commonly the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMVs). The article isolates one part of the causal impact of AVR on turnout by taking advantage of a temporal feature of license renewals. Many individuals interact with the DMV periodically due to the need to renew drivers' licenses. Because licenses in both California and Oregon expire on birthdays, an individual's birth date can be treated as an exogenous variable discriminating between some individuals who are registered to vote in time for the election, while others are not. Our instrumental variable analysis compares registration and voting rates for individuals with birth dates prior and subsequent to the voter registration deadline. After calculating a causal effect of AVR on turnout at the individual level, we extrapolate this AVR “birthday” effect to overall voter turnout for these states.

The impact of voter turnout on referendum outcomes: evidence from Ireland

We estimate the causal effect of voter turnout on referendum outcomes in Ireland using a newly created dataset that links 25 years of constituency-level referendum results to a variety of demographic and economic characteristics, as well as daily rainfall amounts. Our instrumental variables methodology uses rainfall as an instrument for voter turnout to overcome issues of endogeneity. By exploiting Ireland’s extensive experience with referendums, we are the first to explore the heterogeneous effects of turnout by referendum type (social issues versus regime-related issues). We find that a one-percentage-point increase in turnout is associated with a 1.6-percentage-point increase in support for progressively liberal social policies, which include issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. For regime-related issues, such as EU economic treaties, we find no statistically significant effect of voter turnout on referendum outcomes. Our finding that turnout benefits socially progressive policies is consistent with a related strand of literature for general elections that indicates higher turnout benefits left-wing political parties.

The local press as an external public governance power

ABSTRACT Do national and local newspapers both impact voter turnout? This paper tackles this question by employing data from a unique dataset that collects detailed national and local newspapers, politico-institutional and socio-economic information for Italy during 1980–2007. We use a Dynamic Panel Data with Instrumental Variables methodology that allows for the consideration of potential sources of endogeneity that may affect the relation between the press and voting behavior. We strengthen this methodology by considering the industry’s entry and exit of newspapers – i.e. turbulence – as an external shock. Our analysis provides robust evidence that local newspaper readership affects both national and local turnout and improves political accountability.

Increasing citizens involvement in participatory budgeting

The purpose of this study is to present findings from a research project which investigates the possibilities of how to improve citizen involvement in participatory budgeting. We collaborated with the town of Hlohovec, Slovak Republic. We used behavioural interventions to increase the number of both projects submitted and voter participation. A database of existing interventions and an overview of suitable interventions were prepared. We used a design specifically developed for the town of Hlohovec. Our intervention was focused on flyer design and aimed at all citizens. We modified flyers using the knowledge of behavioural science. Two redesigned flyers were created and two different slogans are used for each redesigned flyer. The intervention we implemented in the town of Hlohovec appears to have been highly effective in increasing the number of voters. However, a big challenge for the future is to find a way how to filter effects of support activities to increase citizen involvement prepared by the town. The behavioural intervention we developed can be used in any other municipality in which there would be an effort to solve the lack of interest in participatory budgeting.

Climate Risk and Preferences over the Size of Government: Evidence from California Wildfires

Abstract How does exposure to risk shape individual preferences for an expanded state? I examine this question in the context of climate change-related risk. Using variation in California wildfire activity, I show neighborhoods experiencing large fires increase support by 0.8 percentage points for ballot initiatives which expand the size of government and by 2.4 percentage points for ballot initiatives endorsed by pro-environment interest groups. The effect is stronger in Republican areas and is not driven by shifts in voter registration or turnout, suggesting the mechanism acts through changes in individual preferences rather than compositional changes in the electorate.

Interpersonal Communication of the Election Commission as a Strategy in Efforts to Improve the Political Efficiency of the Fisherman Community in Manggar District, Belitung Timur Regency

The KPU's communication target in general elections is to increase voter participation by giving them their voting rights in elections. Preliminary studies show that around 69.8% of 40 fishermen in Manggar District, East Belitung Regency, are still apathetic towards political processes such as elections and feel that their involvement in politics will have no impact. Therefore, the KPU then implemented an interpersonal communication strategy in an effort to increase the political efficacy of the fishing community in Manggar District. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method with data collection techniques of interviews, observation, and documentation. Data analysis used the Miles and Huberman interactive model, which consisted of the stages of data collection, data condensation, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The results of the study found that the East Belitung KPU, together with members of the Manggar District Election Committee (PPK), held face-to-face meetings and discussions with fishermen groups as part of the KPU's outreach activities to the public. KPU has been open and honest in conveying any information related to the election, understanding the problems felt by fishermen, and providing support in the form of providing election education and knowledge to fishermen. In addition, KPU has also tried to build an atmosphere and interaction with fishermen to foster equality, as well as a communication approach that considers fishermen important. External factors such as the social environment or friends in the community and the candidate's vision and mission that can prosper the fishermen are factors that also influence the fishermen's perceptions and evaluations of elections and the political system in Indonesia.

The value of being the decisive voter: Exploratory evidence from a hedonic model

In the field of public economics, there is a literature on calculating the probability of being a decisive voter. The raison d'etre of this literature is to explain voter turnout. In this short empirical paper, we look at the question from a different angle. Heterogeneity in voting preferences means that some individuals vote rationally, others instrumentally, and some individuals are marginal and respond to changes in the probability of being decisive. Individuals with a preference for instrumental voting might be willing to pay more to live in an area with a greater probability of being a decisive voter. If this is the case, housing prices should reflect this higher willingness to pay. We test our theory using hedonic data from Columbus Ohio and find suggestive evidence that voters are willing to pay for a greater likelihood of being a decisive voter. Our results, however, cannot rule out other interpretations.