Correlates of Voter Turnout

Abstract

Despite decades of research, there is no consensus as to the core correlates of national-level voter turnout. We argue that this is, in part, due to the lack of comprehensive, systematic empirical analysis. This paper conducts such an analysis. We identify 44 articles on turnout from 1986 to 2017. These articles include over 127 potential predictors of voter turnout, and we collect data on seventy of these variables. Using extreme bounds analysis, we run over 15 million regressions to determine which of these 70 variables are robustly associated with voter turnout in 579 elections in 80 democracies from 1945 to 2014. Overall, 22 variables are robustly associated with voter turnout, including compulsory voting, concurrent elections, competitive elections, inflation, previous turnout, and economic globalization.

Social networks and voter turnout

“…In a recent meta-analysis of 44 articles on turnout, Frank and Martínez i Coma [ 45 ] found over 120 potential predictors of voter turnout in the literature. After running 15 million regressions using data from 70 of these predictors, they found 22 that were robustly associated with turnout.…”

Turnout in Serbian parliamentary elections during the two decades after the end of Milošević’s rule

“…Despite extensive empirical support, the findings are far from being entirely consistent even at the level of meta-analytic studies (Frank and Martínez i Coma, 2021; Smets and Van Ham, 2013). Additionally, collected scientific material is not equally consistent in different types of political regimes.…”

“…Frank and Martínez i Coma (2021) argue that the main determinants of turnout in democratic and non-democratic regimes are quite similar. However, it has been shown that the findings obtained from studies of hybrid regimes often contain inconsistencies and contradictions (Norris, 2002; Dukenbaev, 2017).…”

From Economic Crisis to a Crisis of Representation? The Relationship Among Economic Conditions, Ideological Congruence, and Electoral Participation

“…Countries with compulsory voting were not included in the analysis because this is such a powerful incentive for electoral participation that voter's characteristics are less relevant to explain turnout than in countries in which abstaining do not carry sanctions (Blais 2007;Frank and Martínezi Coma 2021;Lachat and Teperoglou 2021). Similarly, I only included in the analysis countries that at the time of the election have a score higher than 3 on the Freedom House democracy ratings.…”

“…While understanding what makes citizens more or less likely to vote has been widely studied by political scientists, it is still a controversial topic because experts do not agree on what factors drive turnout (Blais 2006;Smets and van Ham 2013;Cancela and Geys 2016;Frank and Martínezi Coma 2021). Scholars have offered different sets of explanations of what makes voters more likely to vote, but while some have just focused on the individual characteristics that make citizens more willing to vote (Smets and van Ham 2013), others have paid attention to the institutional settings in order to assess the differences in voter turnout (Frank and Martínezi Coma 2021). Thus, experts have often offered answers of why people participate in elections that are limited to either micro-or macrolevel factors.…”