Core and Peripheral Voters: Predictors of Turnout Across Three Types of Elections

Abstract

Citizens who abstain from voting in consecutive elections and inequality in turnout in democratic elections constitute a challenge to the legitimacy of democracy. Applying the law of dispersion, which stipulates higher levels of turnout and higher levels of equality in turnout are positively related, we study turnout patterns across different types of elections in Denmark, a high-turnout European context. Across three different elections with turnout rates from 56.3 to 85.9 percent, we use a rich, nationwide panel dataset of 2.1 million citizens with validated turnout and high-quality sociodemographic variables. Nine percent of the citizens are abstainers in the three consecutive elections, and these are disproportionately male, of non-Western ethnic background, with little education, and with low income. The law of dispersion finds support as inequalities in turnout increase when turnout decreases and vice versa. Furthermore, municipalities with lower turnout have higher inequalities in participation than high-turnout municipalities in local elections.

Bias in Self-reported Voting and How it Distorts Turnout Models: Disentangling Nonresponse Bias and Overreporting Among Danish Voters

“…These findings align with previous research (Smets and van Ham 2013; Bhatti et al. 2018). As we would expect from a random sample, the point estimates in the sampling frame model are close to the population model.…”

“…We choose these covariates because are widely used in turnout studies, and we know from previous research that they predict turnout for Danish voters (Smets and van Ham 2013; Bhatti et al. 2018).…”

Selective Abstention in Simultaneous Elections: Understanding the Turnout Gap

“…For instance, selective abstention may be a result of some voters being peripherally engaged in politics. It may require more to motivate them to vote in lower-level elections (Bhatti et al 2019;Burnham 1965). On the other hand, some voters may abstain in some of the elections because of lack of information (Dubin and Kalsow 1996).…”

Fiscal rules and electoral turnout

“…However, the results are not substantially different when running the models with a logit estimator. 25 As the independent variable, I use an interaction between the existence of the different type of fiscal rules in the country of the respondent and the respondent's 22 However, aggregate turnout rate and turnout inequality appear to be highly correlated (Bhatti et al 2018).…”

“…This decreases their electoral turnout since some level of political information is a prerequisite for participating in elections (Hortala-Vallve and Larcinese 2017, 413-418).7 Through the mechanisms of the well-knownMeltzer and Richards (1981) model where the level of redistribution is determined by the relative income of the median voter, which is relatively lower and thus yield a higher level of redistribution if poorer voters actually turn out in elections. See alsoLarcinese (2007).8 Research also suggest that decreased overall turnout increases turnout inequality and vice versa(Bhatti et al 2018).…”