Opening hours of polling stations and voter turnout: Evidence from a natural experiment

Abstract

Voter turnout has declined in many industrialized countries, raising the question of whether electoral institutions increase voter turnout. We exploit an electoral reform in the Austrian state of Burgenland as a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of opening hours of polling stations on voter turnout. The results show that a 10 percent increase in opening hours increased voter turnout by some 0.5 to 0.9 percentage points. The effect is substantial because voter turnout was already around 80 percent before the reform in question. The results also show that the vote share of the conservative party decreased in the course of the reform, while the vote shares of the social democratic party and of the populist rightwing party (both parties attract blue-collar workers) increased. Enhancing participation in elections by extending the opening hours of polling stations remains a question to what extent politicians and voters believe that the benefits of higher voter turnout overcompensate for additional costs of longer opening hours.

Compulsory voting and political participation: Empirical evidence from Austria

“…Once compulsory voting was abolished, however, voter turnout returned to the pre-compulsory voting level and had no longrun effects. This finding is well in line with the results by Bechtel et al (2018) on compulsory voting for Switzerland and Potrafke and Roesel (2020), showing only temporary effects of longer opening hours of polling stations in Austria. However, we also use EVS microdata evidence on political values and actions to investigate the mechanisms behind our results.…”

“…Bechtel et al (2018) investigate compulsory voting in federal referendums in the Swiss canton of Vaud between 1900 and 1970 and find some small spillover effects into turnout in other elections but limited persistence. Potrafke and Roesel (2020) show that longer opening hours of polling stations increased voter turnout but did not influence subsequent elections when longer opening hours were not in place. Only the results obtained by Shineman (2012) indicate some long-term effects of compulsory voting on political interest.…”

“…An important issue is whether electoral institutions influence voter turnout. Research has shown that extended opening hours at polling stations and prepaid postage serve to increase voter turnout (Garmann, 2017;Schelker and Schneiter, 2017;Potrafke and Roesel, 2020). An alternative policy measure to increase voter turnout is compulsory voting.…”

“…As of 2007, the national parliament is elected for a term of five years (previously: four years). We focus on national elections, because although the President is the federal head of the state of Austria, s/he mainly administrates ceremonial events like receptions and gives addresses of welcome (on presidential elections in Austria, seePotrafke and Roesel (2019)). State elections are held at different points in time across the nine Austrian states.…”

A banana republic? The effects of inconsistencies in the counting of votes on voting behavior

“…7 On voter turnout and electoral institutions in the Austrian states. see, for example, Gaebler et al (2017) and Potrafke and Roesel (2018).…”