The Source of Turnout Decline

Abstract

Voter turnout has consistently declined since the 1980s across a wide range of advanced democracies. Much of this decline appears to be the result of young people abstaining. In this article the authors test two arguments for this trend. The first rests on the claim that the character of elections has changed, specifically that elections have become less competitive and that young people’s propensities for voting are particularly negatively affected by this. The second maintains that recent generations have different values and that these value differences explain turnout declines. The authors test these two explanations using three different data sets: (a) individual-level and election-specific data from 83 elections in eight countries since the 1950s, (b) longitudinal individual-level and district-level data from British elections for the period 1974–2005, and (c) panel data from American presidential elections. The findings provide strong evidence for the generational value change argument, whereas the authors find scant support for the competition argument.

Assessing How Participators Combine Acts in Their “Political Tool Kits”: A Person-Centered Measurement Approach for Analyzing Citizen Participation

“…Further research is required to determine how the political participator types identified in the current study may vary over time. While the limited availability of long-term longitudinal data on attitudes and political participation is well known (Blais and Rubenson 2013), particularly outside of electoral participation, future research on this topic will benefit from the recent development of several high-quality longitudinal data sets in a number of countries such as Belgium (Hooghe et al 2015) and Sweden (Amnå et al 2009). …”

“…Increases in the prevalence of these citizenship norms—variously referred to as “engaged” (Coffé and van der Lippe 2010; Dalton 2008, 2015), “critical” (Geissel 2008; Norris 1999, 2011), “self-actualizing” (Bennett 2008, 2012; Shehata et al 2015; Wells 2014), and “emancipative” (Welzel 2007, 2013)—are identified as motivating increasingly common acts of non-institutionalized participation. Cross-national empirical investigations of these claims indeed suggest that a decline in duty-based norms has led to decreased institutional participation such as voter turnout (Blais and Rubenson 2013), while certain types of “good citizenship” norms are associated with some non-institutionalized activities such as protest (Welzel and Deutsch 2012), albeit with weaker effects in new and less developed democracies (Bolzendahl and Coffé 2013). …”

“…Research has shown that, in a variety of democracies, a decline in norms of civic duty is related to a decline in voting (Blais et al 2004; Blais and Rubenson 2013; Bowler and Donovan 2013; Raney and Berdahl 2009). Scholars who interpret recent participation trends as indicative of civic and political renewal have not disputed these findings, and Dalton’s (2008, pp.…”

A Bark But No Bite: Inequality and the 2014 New Zealand General Election

“…Two weeks before the election, nearly 200,000 had not enrolled (Whelan and Hunt 2014). Young people are invariably less likely to vote than older people, but if the age gap grows (because voting is habitual and best acquired young, as they age young non-voters become older non-voters), we will see the generational replacements of keen voters with apparently more indifferent non-voters (Blais and Rubenson 2013;Franklin 2004;Vowles 2010; see also Rusk et al 2004;Dalton 2007;Lyons and Alexander 2000;Wass 2007;Wattenberg 2007). …”

Informed Citizenship in a Media-Centric Way of Life

“…Attempts at broadening this conceptualization often coil back to electoral activities such as volunteering time or money to campaigns (Valentino et al, 2011). At the same time, voting rates are low in contemporary democracies (Blais & Rubenson, 2013;Norris, 2002) and election-centric activities are not an integral part of daily life. These definitions also leave little room for understanding dimensions of participation that no longer occur in the physical world.…”