Voters and Abstainers in National and European Elections

Stockemer, Daniel; Blais, André

doi:10.1017/s1062798718000728

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In Europe only around 65% of eligible citizens vote in elections (EU Fact Check, 2019). Abstainers generally differ from voters in that they have lower levels of political knowledge and political interest (Stockemer & Blais, 2019), in other words, they simply lack motivation to vote (Harder & Krosnick, 2008). Furthermore, Geurkink et al (2020) have recently demonstrated that abstainers (in comparison to voters of mainstream parties) have lower levels of political trust.…”

Section: Populism Among Nonvotersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power to the people: Disidentification with the government and the support for populism

2021

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Populist attitudes have been shown to predict voting behavior. These attitudes consist of a belief that everyday citizens are better judges of what is best for their own country than politicians and that the political elites are corrupt. As such, a clear “us” (pure and good everyday citizens) and “them” (the evil political elite) rhetoric is present. In the present research, we propose that identification with the government may predict whether people would vote for, and whether they have voted in the past for, a populist party (either from the political left or the political right). The present research (N = 562), carried out among French citizens, showed that lower government identification related to past voting behavior, current voting intentions and likelihood to switch from a non‐populist to a populist party. Identification with the government was also negatively associated to intention to abstain from voting. Moreover, government identification was a stronger predictor of these voting‐related outcomes than the recently developed populist attitudes measures. Unexpectedly, national identification was a not a significant predictor of voting behavior. In conclusion, the present research suggests that the extent to which citizens identify and feel represented by the government should be considered on par with populist attitudes in understanding support for populist parties. Perceiving that the government does not represent everyday people may be sufficient to abandon support for mainstream (non‐populist) political parties.

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Section: Populism Among Nonvotersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power to the people: Disidentification with the government and the support for populism

2021

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“…18 In earlier work we also used urbanization as a heterogeneity measure because of its wide variation across Indian states and over time. However, there is no current consensus on how the urban-rural split is expected to affect electoral participation [for recent work Stockemer and Blais (2019) and McAllister and Muller (2018)] and urbanization was found to be insignificant in all forms of our test. 19 Between 1967 and 1983, there had been more than 2700 cases of party defections, which brought down over 16 state Governments.…”

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 74%

On the Structure of the Political Party System in Indian States, 1957 - 2018

Ferris

Dash²

2021

Preprint

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What accounts for the large and ever-changing number of political parties that contest Indian state elections? In this paper we test an equilibrium model of political parties where the number of parties depend on the average size of state constituencies, the heterogeneity of the state’s electorate, state per capita income as well as constitutional and legislative rules that directly affect party numbers. Extending the analysis to consider the effects on entry and exits highlights those factors that have affected party turnover instead of or in addition to changing aggregate party numbers. Comparison of the effects on numbers with those on the effective number of parties (ENP) suggests that the model explains variations in the number of smaller sized parties that are a more transitory part of the electoral process. Whether this implies that the model is more applicable to the lesser developed Indian states is examined by re-testing the model against a subdivision of states that differ by their stage of development. While most variables work in the same way, increases in the proportion of reserved seats have decreased both party numbers and ENP in lower income states, with the opposite occurring in higher income states. The effect of state partition has been to decrease party vote fragmentation more than party numbers.

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“…There are several reasons why the link might exist for the European elections, deriving from the second-order character of the election (Reif and Schmitt, 1980): (a) In European elections, there is a general perception that there is less at stake (less-at-stake dimension). On the voters' side this is accompanied by little knowledge about the European elections, little interest and a lesser sense of voting as a civic duty (Stockemer and Blais, 2019) than in national elections. It is mainly those who are interested in politics and have a good knowledge of European politics, who vote in European elections.…”

Section: The Law Of Dispersion and Secondorder European Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is mainly those who are interested in politics and have a good knowledge of European politics, who vote in European elections. Both characteristics, as well the sense of civic duty, correlate strongly with socioeconomic status (Stockemer and Blais, 2019). Furthermore, vote abstention is much more likely among those who are dissatisfied with their last vote for governing parties in first-order elections (Schmitt et al, 2020: 12).…”

Section: The Law Of Dispersion and Second-order European Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political equality without social equality? Social distortion of voter turnout in the European elections 2019 across nine European capitals

Haußner

Kaeding

2020

Research & Politics

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Although we know a lot about why citizens vote or abstain in elections, the social inequality of low turnout in European elections has attracted little attention. This paper focuses on voter turnout in the last 2019 European elections and examines whether low voter turnout in second-order elections is automatically associated with high social inequality, using Tingsten’s law as inspiration. By contrasting a second-order election with other high and low turnout elections, the paper deepens our understanding of the mechanisms behind low turnout in European elections. Following the argument that the macrolevel social imbalances of low turnout can best be analysed at the neighbourhood level, we develop a small-scale analysis of turnout across nine capitals of the European Union for the 2019 European Parliament (election and perform a regression model with interaction effects to examine the effects between different types of elections. Our results do not find differences in the effect of neighbourhoods’ social context on voter turnout between these elections. Although turnout in all cities is socially biased across all types of elections, jeopardising the ideal of political equality across Europe, we find no evidence that the 2019 European Parliament elections were more socially unequal than other elections – regardless of their second-order nature.

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Voters and Abstainers in National and European Elections

Cited by 9 publications

References 31 publications

Power to the people: Disidentification with the government and the support for populism

Power to the people: Disidentification with the government and the support for populism

On the Structure of the Political Party System in Indian States, 1957 - 2018

Political equality without social equality? Social distortion of voter turnout in the European elections 2019 across nine European capitals

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