Turnout in Germany in the course of time: Life cycle and cohort effects on electoral turnout from 1953 to 2049

Konzelmann, Laura; Wagner, Corina; Rattinger, Hans

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2011.11.006

Cited by 51 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Between the ages 18 and 20, turnout drops off before gradually increasing again with age. This phenomenon has been observed in Sweden (Öhrvall 2009), Germany (Konzelmann, Wagner, and Rattinger 2012), Finland and Denmark (Bhatti, Hansen, and Wass 2012). This is in line with the theoretical expectation, discussed in the previous section, that 18-year-olds are more likely to encounter their first election in a more advantageous social context.…”

Section: Social Network and Mobilisationsupporting

confidence: 86%

Growing into Voting : Election Turnout among Young People and Habit Formation

Öhrvall¹

2018

Linköping Studies in Arts and Sciences

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Section: Social Network and Mobilisationsupporting

confidence: 86%

Growing into Voting : Election Turnout among Young People and Habit Formation

Öhrvall¹

2018

Linköping Studies in Arts and Sciences

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“…H3: A stronger effect of apathy on turnout over time accounts for the steeper decline of turnout in Norway than in Sweden Finally, as mentioned at the outset, various individual-level studies in Western Europe have found that turnout decline is primarily driven by younger generations of citizens voting less than older generations across Western Europe (Blais & Rubenson 2013), in European Parliament elections (Bhatti & Hansen 2012), in Germany (Konzelmann et al 2012), Finland (Wass 2007b), Sweden (Górecki 2013) and Norway (Gallego 2009). To examine the role of these generational dynamics in differential turnout decline in Norway and Sweden, the final hypothesis becomes:…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 91%

Differential Turnout Decline in Norway and Sweden: A Generation of Apathy or Alienation?

Valgarðsson

2019

Scand Pol Stud

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Voter turnout has been in a trend of gradual decline in most established democracies in recent decades and the reasons for this are by no means fully understood. While most studies agree that the trend is largely driven by younger generations voting less than older cohorts, the individual-level mechanisms of their declining propensity to vote are still disputed. A major distinction in the literature on democratic developments is that between theories of political apathy and political alienation: whether citizens are less interested in politics or still interested but instead estranged from their political systems. An interesting test for these different explanations can be found in Scandinavia: While Norway and Sweden have intimate historical, political and cultural similarities, Norway has been experiencing gradual turnout decline, while there has been no clear overall trend in Sweden. This study uses a combined dataset of over 50.000 respondents from 31 national election studies in these two countries from 1956-2013 to test the relative roles of apathy, alienation and generational dynamics in explaining these different trends in turnout. The results indicate that apathy has been declining while alienation has been rising in both countries. However, in Norway, those who are more apathetic today are much less likely to vote than apathetic citizens were in the past. The youngest generations are also significantly more apathetic and less likely to vote in Norway than in Sweden. These dynamics appear to account for the larger trend of turnout decline in Norway.

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“…The novel assumption in my theory is that after several turnout episodes true habituation takes and remain in place. Thus, early political experiences affect later turnout , Meredith 2009, Tóka 2009 15 This notion has sometimes been labeled as the first-time boost (Konzelmann et al 2012) or the first-time hype ). The idea is that the psychological reward is significant the first time an individual is eligible to vote (Tóka 2009).…”

Section: Is Turning Out To Vote a Habit?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Entity/Event-Level Sentiment Detection and Inference

Deng

2015

Proceedings of the 2015 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Student Rese

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Turnout has decreased in 23 out of 36 established democracies since 1945. Among all worldwide cases Costa Rica is a good laboratory for studying turnout oscillations. During three decades between 1958 and 1994, political participation average rates remained high in a comparative perspective. Following that trend, one would easily predict that individuals socialized during that period of time must replicate automatically their parents' and grandparents' levels of high political activism. However, turnout patterns in the country since 1998 do not fit very well in that story.Older voters are no longer voting at the rates they usually did and the younger are entering into politics during times of lower participation. The combination of these two factors can have big deleterious and long-lasting effects on turnout trends.Estimating the causal relationship between consecutive voting decisions has proven to be intrinsically difficult for social scientists. Drawing on an exceptionally rich and unique turnout dataset and a mixed-methods approach that includes longitudinal multivariate analysis, face-toface interviews and geospatial statistics this contribution seeks to explain why in Costa Rica, currently the oldest and most stable democracy in Latin America, turnout has declined? And more importantly: what factors drive these changes? v Individual characteristics, although still relevant in static theories regarding turnout determinants, have proved to be insufficient for understanding why individuals' turnout behavior varies over time. Instead, I theorize that the partisan (group) identity that makes people turn out because they are loyal to the party in a context of conflict produces stronger motivation but it is activated selectively, and it only works in a context of "threat" or polarized deliberation.Nevertheless, these incentives may change over time, they may increase or decrease under certain circumstances impacting turnout. Essentially, the more polarized the electoral competition, the easier it will be for citizens to cast their vote.A polarized deliberation, the key factor in my causal story, creates the conditions for the activation of strong partisan identities that stimulate voters' mobilization to the polls. Therefore, During the course of my fieldwork in Costa Rica, I accumulated many debts. I especially thank all the persons I contacted for the interviews and accepted to share their experiences with me. These interviews were crucial for my research project. Without the knowledge I compiled in these conversations I would not be able to develop the theoretical argument of chapter 6.In Pitt, I was also fortunate to share time with several great friends. (Carlin et.al. 2015).The worst case scenario would be one in which this pattern could extend individuals' apathy toward politics during lifetime, causing low turnout to freeze for decades. Therefore, if we want to understand the implications of turnout decline in established democracies, we first need to comprehend the conditions under which these chang...

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Turnout in Germany in the course of time: Life cycle and cohort effects on electoral turnout from 1953 to 2049

Cited by 51 publications

References 15 publications

Growing into Voting : Election Turnout among Young People and Habit Formation

Growing into Voting : Election Turnout among Young People and Habit Formation

Differential Turnout Decline in Norway and Sweden: A Generation of Apathy or Alienation?

Entity/Event-Level Sentiment Detection and Inference

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