Rising start-up costs of voting: political inequality among first-time voters

Different Class Citizens: Understanding the Relationship between Socio-economic Inequality and Voting Abstention

“…Democracy at the workplace therefore is not only important for political socialisation in general (Geurkink et al 2020;Jian -Jeffres 2008;Carter 2006), it is specifically relevant for people with less socio -economic resources, as it oftentimes enables their first positive experiences with democracy and participation: The older our survey respondents and our interviewees were, the more likely they belonged to a political camp or had family ties to a political party that obliged them to vote. This adds to recent studies showing that the 'start -up costs of voting' have risen along social status lines (Schäfer et al 2020). While there had always been a certain difference in the probability of first -time voting related to individual or parental resources (Plutzer 2002), most Western European democracies could reduce this gap through the strong presence of Labour or Social Democratic Parties attached to the class cleavage.…”

“…Furthermore, this turnout gap has increased substantially since the 1980s -in many established democracies and often parallel to the rise of socio -economic inequality. Class impacts political participation (Armingeon -Schädel 2015;Barthels 2008;Schäfer et al 2020) as well as party preference formation, both for voters (Kitschelt -Rehm 2014;Engler -Weisstanner 2020) and legislators (Carnes 2013). The growing, class -based participation gap is accompanied by distortions of political issue setting and decision -making, as democracies have become less responsive to the political concerns of the less affluent (Schäfer -Schwander 2019).…”

Temporary Disenfranchisement: Negative Side Effects of Lowering the Voting Age

“…With respect to political maturity, analyses of cases where voting age 16 applies have demonstrated that underage citizens are neither particularly unable nor unwilling to participate (Stiers, Hooghe, and Goubin 2020;Wagner, Johann, and Kritzinger 2012). Although prior research shows that turnout among young citizens is generally lower (Franklin 2004;Smets 2012) and more unequal (Schäfer, Roßteutscher, and Abendschön 2020), there are also indications that turnout among 18-and 19-year-olds is higher than among 20-to 30-year-olds and that this pattern may be even more pronounced among underage citizens (Bhatti, Hansen, and Wass 2012;Leininger and Faas 2020). Finally, several studies confirm a positive effect of turnout on political engagement (Schulte-Cloos 2019) and future turnout (Coppock and Green 2016).…”

Personalización, transversalidad y capilaridad: la campaña digital del BNG para las elecciones gallegas de 2020

“…El Covid-19 constituye una muestra de elemento disruptivo que amenaza la participación electoral (Blais et al, 2004), ya que las posibilidades de contagio en el contacto social coartarían a los ciudadanos de acudir a votar. Esto resulta de especial interés con los jóvenes convocados a las urnas por primera vez e identificados como objeto del BNG, dado que el comportamiento en las elecciones iniciales de su vida va a determinar su voto posterior (Schäfer, Roßteutscher y Abendschön, 2020). El ambiente de desconfianza política en España a raíz de la pandemia, semejante a la noción de "contrademocracia" (Rosanvallon, 2007), ocasiona que sea aún más importante que los políticos de proximidad contribuyan a la estabilidad de las esferas local y regional (Jenkins y Nielsen, 2020).…”