Voter Turnout

Different data mining algorithms applied to the same data can result in similar findings, typically in the form of rules. These similarities can be exploited to identify especially powerful rules, in particular those that are common to the different algorithms. This research focuses on the independent application of association and classification mining algorithms to the same data to discover common or similar rules, which are deemed ''persistent-rules". The persistent-rule discovery process is demonstrated and tested against two data sets drawn from the American National Election Studies: one data set used to predict voter turnout and the second used to predict vote choice.

This empirical study seeks to identify key aggregate-level economic and non-economic determinants of the expected benefits from voting and hence aggregate voter turnout. A unique dimension of this study is the hypothesis that PAC (political action committee) election campaign contributions, e.g., to U.S. Senate races, may reduce the expected benefits of voting and hence voter turnout because the greater the growth of real PAC contributions, the greater the extent to which eligible voters may become concerned that these contributions lead to PAC political influence over elected officials. Indeed, this study finds for the period 1960-2000 that the voter participation rate has been negatively impacted by the growth in real PAC contributions to Senate election campaigns. Another interesting finding is that voter turnout is directly/positively related to strong public approval or strong public disapproval of the incumbent President. This study also finds that the voter participation rate...

This article was supported in part by Award No. 06LHHCA001, granted by the Corporation for National and Community Service, Learn and Serve America Higher Education through California Campus Compact. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Corporation for National and Community Service, California Campus Compact, or the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Researchers disagree over the definition, measurement, and expected political consequences of American patriotism, a situation that is fueled by the absence of a strong theoretical research foundation. We develop and evaluate a new measure of national attachment that is grounded in social identity theory , drawing on data from three distinct sources: two studies of undergraduate students and the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS). Confirmatory factor analyses provide clear evidence that national identity is distinct from other measures of national attachment including symbolic, constructive, and uncritical patriotism (and nationalism). National identity has a number of other good measurement properties when compared to existing measures: it receives equal endorsement from conservatives and liberals (unlike most other measures which exhibit an ideological bias), develops with time spent in the United States among immigrants, and most importantly is the only measure of national attachment to predict political interest and voter turnout in both student and adult samples, consistent with the predictions of social identity theory. In that sense, the national identity measure outperforms all other measures of national attachment and provides unambiguous evidence that a strong American identity promotes civic involvement.

Remote electronic voting through Internet or mobile phones can potentially increase citizens' electoral participation in countries with low voter turnout such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper measures citizen's readiness for remote electronic voting in Tanzania. Factors influencing citizens' readiness were identified. These factors were further analyzed using SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis.Primary data were collected from eligible voters using questionnaires. Using descriptive statistics and Chi-square, we determined socio-demographic and technical factors impacting voters' perception of remote electronic voting versus the current paper ballot system. The results indicate that the majority of Tanzanians prefer remote electronic voting as an alternative to the existing voting system. However, they have concerns related to security, privacy and reliability of this new technology. We conclude that remote electronic voting entails a promising opportunity to increase voter participation in Tanzania; however the "right" enabling environment should be created to ensure its successful implementation and sustainability.

RESUMO As crescentes taxas de abstenção eleitoral que se verificam em Moçambique no geral, em particular no distrito de Mopeia, na província de Zambézia, desde o escrutínio de 2004 a 2014, num contexto em que o partido Frelimo vence as eleições de forma sucessiva, fazem com que seja imperioso questionar as razões para abstenção eleitoral. É a este nível que este artigo se situa, tendo o objectivo de perceber "quais as razões para abstenção eleitoral no distrito de Mopeia?". À essa questão, partiu-se do pressuposto segundo o qual os potenciais eleitores percebendo a possibilidade de desperdício dos seus votos (wasted votes) optam pela abstenção eleitoral; E estabeleceu-se a hipótese de que a competição eleitoral vai influenciar a abstenção eleitoral, na medida em que quanto maior for a competição eleitoral menor será a abstenção eleitoral e o contrario é valido. O estudo teve como perspectiva teórica a Escolha Racional e utilizou a metodologia quantitativa, abordagem indutiva, fazendo-se uma observação directa extensiva (inquérito/survey a uma amostra representativa). A análise dos dados (resultados eleitorais, entrevistas, e inquérito a amostra final de 288 abstencionistas) revelou aspectos interessantes em relação à hipótese e pressuposto do trabalho: a taxa de abstenção eleitoral em Mopeia cresce e decresce não em função da competição eleitoral. Por outro lado, os resultados das entrevistas e do inquérito corroboraram com o pressuposto, isto é, é a noção de Wasted Votes que está por detrás da abstenção eleitoral em Mopeia. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Abstenção eleitoral, Competição Eleitoral, Mopeia e Wasted Votes. ABSTRACT The growing electoral abstention rates in Mozambique in General, and in particular in the District of Mopeia, in Zambézia province, from 2004 to 2014, in a context in which the Frelimo party wins the elections overwhelmingly, make it imperative to question the reasons for abstention. It is at this level that this article is, aiming to question "What are the reasons for abstention in the electoral district of Mopeia?". At this point, the article assumes that when the potential voters perceive the possibility of wasting their votes, they opt for electoral abstention; and it was established the hypothesis that the electoral competition influences the electoral abstention, to the extent that the higher the electoral competition the lower electoral abstention and the opposite are valid. The study adopts the rational choice perspective, used the quantitative methodology, inductive approach, and an extensive direct observation (survey). The analysis of

This paper uses the unique social structure of Arab communities to examine the effect of social identity on voter turnout. We first show that voters are more likely to vote for a candidate who shares their social group (signified by last name) as compared to other candidates. Using last name as a measure of group affiliation, an inverted U-shaped relationship between group size and voter turnout has been found (borderline significant) which is consistent with theoretical models that reconcile the paradox of voting by incorporating group behavior.

This article examines the effect that the decoupling of state and national elections has had on voter turnout in India's national parliamentary polls since 1971. According to conventional wisdom in the comparative literature on electoral turnout, separate elections to multiple levels and/or branches of government should depress turnout relative to co-temporal polls, ceteris paribus. The evidence from Indian elections provides strong confirmation for this hypothesis. This suggests that political decentralization through separate national and local elections may actually weaken citizens' incentives to participate in the democratic electoral process.

Political parties play a pivotal role by mobilizing citizens to participate in the political process. This may be particularly important in new democracies, where party attachments are weak and voter turnout is low. Using data drawn from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), we examine citizen's reported contact with political parties during a national campaign across a range of

Voter participation rates vary widely across the 50 states. This empirical study seeks, within the context of a broadened version of the Frational voter model,_ to identify determinants of this interstate variation. Using the 2004 general election as the study period, it is found that the voter participation rate in a state is positively related to the percent of the state's adult population with at least a high school education, the state's unemployment rate, the percent of the state's population age 65 and older, and the female labor force participation rate in the state. In addition, it is found that voter turnout in a state is negatively related to the state's median family income and the percentage of its population that is Hispanic. (JEL D72

Diagnoses of a democratic recession or ‘hollowing out’ of democracy are numerous and varied but usually encompass the following symptoms: a decline in turnout and other forms of political participation; policy making that is increasingly detached from ordinary citizens and their preferences; and an erosion of trust in government and satisfaction with democracy among citizens – all of which ultimately challenge the legitimacy of democratic institutions. Direct democracy is one of the most prominent, far-reaching and popular remedies proposed in response to such diagnoses. It, by allowing citizens to directly vote on questions usually decided by representatives, seems intuitively appealing as an obvious extension and deepening of democracy. In this article I survey the potentials but also pitfalls of an increased institutionalization of direct democracy and use thereof in the countries of the EU focusing on the three key aspects identified above: representation, turnout and citizens’ political support.

The impact of voting costs upon voter turnout is examined using more than 4000 British local government by-elections occurring between 1983 and 1999. Such by-elections occur in virtually every week of the year providing an opportunity to study fluctuations in electoral turnout. The analysis not only notes that voter turnout is in general decline but also identifies a separate seasonal component that affects levels of electoral participation. By-election turnout peaks in the months March-June and is at its lowest during the winter months. Voter turnout appears to be related to varying times of sunset throughout the year, suggesting that a visit to the polling station is a variable cost. A second identifiable cost is associated with the frequency of voting. The study shows that, ceteris paribus, the less time that has elapsed between a by-election and the previous election the lower the turnout. Voter fatigue, therefore, has a measurable impact on turnout. 

The unprecedented historic nature of the 2020 election requires a deeper and more contextual review of the ethnicity and ancestry implications of election turnout beyond the basic lever of exit polling. Voter interest, suppression, mobilization, registration and participation broke every trend in history and have set America on a new path for both participation and division. While this election was barrier breaking, two trendlines stayed consistent, Democrats winning the National Popular Vote & Democratic/3rd Party combined voter selection representing a majority of Americans:
1. The 5th election in a row (including off-off year elections of 2017 and 2019),
2. 3rd National election (includes 2018 Mid-Term),
3. 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections (1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 & 2020) and
4. 23 of the last 31 Presidential & Mid-term elections, the majority of Americans voted for Democratic & 3rd party candidates, constituting an average share of 52.86% of votes cast from 1960 to 2020 (Republican Party candidates have received 47.14% of the votes cast during the 1960 to 2020 electoral time frame & only have exceeded 50% of the popular vote 8 times).
While Democratic candidates struggled down ballot to convert the record turnout and record votes cast for Joe Biden, the underlying trend exist that the volume of turnout and composition of the electorate favored Democrats and continues to provide Democrats with a greater opportunity to expand their legislative, Congressional and Gubernatorial footprint than Republicans.

Although political participation has received wide-ranging scholarly attention, little is known for certain about the effects of social and political context on turnout. A scattered set of analyses-well-known by both political scientists and campaign consultants-suggests that one's neighborhood has a relatively minor impact on the decision to vote. These analyses, however, typically rely upon data from a single location. Drawing on official lists of registered voters from sixteen major counties across seven states (including Florida) from the 2000 presidential election, we use geographic/ mapping information and hierarchical models to obtain a more accurate picture of how neighborhood characteristics affect participation, especially among partisans. Our research shows that neighborhoods influence voting by interacting with partisan affiliation to dampen turnout among voters we might otherwise expect to participate. Most notably, we find Republican partisans in enemy territory tend to vote less than expected, even after accounting for socioeconomic status. Our findings have implications for campaign strategy, and lead us to suggest that campaign targeting efforts could be improved by an integration of aggregate-and individual-level information about voters.

Over the past twenty years, the scientific community and politicians in consolidated democracies have been regularly alarmed by political and electoral participation, portrayed as undergoing a brutal and linear decline. Each election is now scrutinized in terms not only of its results but also of its level of electoral turnout. This paper deals with two important issues—the reality of changes in electoral turnout in Europe and the impact of the institutional constraint of compulsory voting in voter turnout levels—through an analysis of 402 elections held in thirty-five States from 1944 until December, the 31st 2009. We do ob- serve a contemporary erosion of voter turnout but at this stage voters are not so impossible to find as some claim they are. Furthermore, the assumption that interest in, and the importance of, compulsory voting as an institutional constraint encouraging voter turnout is confirmed.

Many new democracies experience electoral violence. Though this form of political violence is common, there is little understanding of how violence affects vote choice and turnout. This article draws on a vignette experiment that is embedded in a nationally representative survey in Kenya, where electoral violence has occurred several times since the 1990s. We show that voters strongly sanction candidates who are rumored to have used violence, even if the candidate is a coethnic, a copartisan, or has performed well in office in the past. This sanctioning effect, however, is not consistent across voters. Victims of past electoral violence and those in poverty are less likely to sanction candidates that use violence. Rumored use of violence also depresses turnout, even among a violent candidate's core constituents, when voters do not possess countervailing information about the violent candidate's past performance in office.

In 1994, 4 years after the end of the Civil War, Lebanon passed Presidential Decree 5427 naturalizing over 154,931 foreign residents. During the four parliamentary elections that followed, these naturalized citizens demonstrated a higher rate of voter participation than the native-born population. The current debate on the nativity gap assumes that recent naturalization should indicate lower rates of voter turnout, except when machine politics orchestrates the opposite. In Lebanon, the patron–client system seems to be responsible for this inverse nativity gap.

We present a theory of strategic voting that predicts elections are more likely to be close and voter turnout is more likely to be high when citizens possess better public information about the composition of the electorate. These findings are disturbing because they suggest that providing more information to potential voters about aggregate political preferences (e.g., through polls, political stock markets, or expert forecasts) may actually undermine the democratic process. We show that if the distribution of preferences is common knowledge, then strategic voting leads to a stark neutrality result in which the probability that either alternative wins the election is 1 2. This occurs because members of the minority compensate exactly for their smaller group size by voting with higher frequency. By contrast, when citizens are symmetrically ignorant about the distribution of types, the majority is more likely to win the election and expected voter turnout is lower. Indeed, when the population is large and voting costs are small, the majority wins with probability arbitrarily close to one in equilibrium. Welfare is, therefore, unambiguously higher when citizens possess less information about the distribution of political preferences.

We model Current Population Survey data with HLM to resolve estimation problems found in studies of how state-level electoral competition affects individual level turnout. We test if voters assumed to be least interested in politics are most likely to be mobilized by competitive elections that stimulates interest. We find that electoral competition, as a contextual force, was consistently associated with individual level turnout. We show that multiple forms of election activity mobilize American voters. These results demonstrate that electoral forces that mobilize voters are multi-faceted and variable across time and place. Our major contribution to the understanding of voter turnout in America is to provide theoretical and empirical support for the idea that competitive elections do not have a neutral effect on the composition of an electorate. Electoral competition tends to have a greater propensity to mobilize voters in groups know to have lower levels of political interest: the young, and the less educated.

The 2022 local elections in New Zealand will be the first elections since 2001 at which voters will no longer be voting for district health boards, which are to be abolished in favour of a national health provider. The result will be a less complex voting process, with a shorter voting paper and fewer candidates. Speculations exists about the likely impact of these changes on voter turnout.

This paper challenges the dominant paradigm of turnout studies by proposing that turnout variationsoccur because elections differ, not because countries differ; and certainly not because people differ.Indeed, we take the radical position that what matters if we want to understand over-time and crossnationalturnout variations is differences in the ways in which citizens are affected by the electoralexperience at different times

Corruption is one of the key problems facing the Russian state as it seeks to evolve out of its socialist past. Naturally, regional patterns of corruption exist across a country as large and diverse as the Russian Federation. To explain these variations, we analyze 2002 data from Transparency International and the Information for Democracy Foundation that provides the first effort to measure differences in incidence of corruption across 40 Russian regions. We find that corruption in Russia primarily is a structural problem, and not one related to its institutions. Within each region, the amount of corruption increases as the size of the regional economy grows, the per capita income decreases, and the population decreases. Russian policymakers can therefore work to reduce corruption by encouraging economic development outside of the key centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Because the data show that voter turnout also lowers corruption, policymakers can also fight corruption by fostering more political accountability in elections.

We examine the association of four socioeconomic factors with turnout in Finland in three age groups. The analyses are based on individual-level register data from electoral wards from the parliamentary elections of 1999 linked to population registration data on personal characteristics covering the whole 25 to 69 year-old Finnish electorate. The results show that income and housing tenure are more important determinants of turnout among older voters than among younger voters, whereas education has a dominant role in determining young people's turnout. Moreover, class has maintained its discriminatory power in determining turnout in all age groups even though working-class under-representation in participation can be partly attributable to previously obtained educational attainment. Furthermore, the lower turnout of younger voters remains unexplained even if socioeconomic factors are held constant. Lower turnout among lower social classes and among the young will affect the legitimacy of the prevalent model of party democracy.

elections, randomized voter mobilization experiments were conducted in Bridgeport, Columbus, Detroit, Minneapolis, Raleigh, and St. Paul. Names appearing on official lists of registered voters were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. A few days before Election Day, the treatment group received a face-to-face contact from a coalition of nonpartisan student and community organizations, encouraging them to vote. After the election, voter turnout records were used to compare turnout rates among people assigned to treatment and control groups. Consistent with the recent experimental results reported by , the findings here indicate that face-to-face voter mobilization was effective in stimulating voter turnout across a wide spectrum of local elections.

This paper examines the record of western democracies to measure the impact of differing electoral formulae on the rate of voter turnout. The record of 509 national elections in 20 countries provides the basis for a regression analysis that clearly identifies higher turnout rates in PR systems that cannot be explained by a wide variety of control variables or traditional arguments about PR. The data also reveal a marked increase in electoral turnout over the last century.

Previous research has found that the campaigns of candidates running for office provide information to voters and can increase turnout. Scholarly research has also found that states with initiatives and referendums appearing on the ballot have higher voter turnout, especially in midterm elections. However, actual initiative campaigns are rarely measured. Drawing on national survey data and state contextual factors, we use a multilevel modeling strategy to test whether Americans are more likely to vote in recent midterm and presidential elections when there is increased spending in initiative and candidate campaigns, as well as more frequent use of direct democracy. The research includes a number of methodological advancements from earlier work on turnout and direct democracy (including a control for endogeneity) by restricting the analysis to initiative states only. The analysis suggests initiative campaigns not only increase individual level turnout but also especially benefit the lower educated.

Esta investigación cuestiona el saber convencional de la disciplina acerca de las causas del voto y de la abstención en varios aspectos cruciales. El estudio demuestra que el consenso acerca de la supuesta irrelevancia de las variables del modelo del votante instrumental ha de ser puesto en cuarentena. Este modelo es capaz de explicar mucho más de lo que se suele aceptar, lo que pone en entredicho que el voto sea el talón de Aquiles de los modelos de elección racional en ciencia política. Para llegar a estas conclusiones, el trabajo analiza diferentes fuentes de beneficios instrumentales (información imperfecta, racionalidad limitada, minimización del riesgo) con bases de datos holandesas y españolas especialmente adecuadas para investigar las causas del voto. Los resultados cuestionan asimismo la aceptación acrítica de que los ciudadanos votan guiados exclusivamente por consideraciones morales y por otras razones relacionadas con el valor intrínseco del voto (deseo de apoyar a la democracia, expresividad, beneficios selectivos). La decisión de votar no puede ser explicada apelando solo al homo economicus o al homo sociologicus: ambos homini deben estar presentes para que la mayoría de ciudadanos se decida a votar. Una contribución adicional del estudio es su formulación de modelos pioneros que tratan como endógenas las variables del modelo instrumental y de las explicaciones no instrumentales del voto.

Would holding elections by mail increase voter turnout? Many electoral reform advocates predict that mail ballot elections will boost participation, basing their prediction on the higher turnout rates among absentee voters and on the rise in voter turnout after Oregon switched to voting by mail. However, selection problems inherent to studies of absentee voters and Oregon give us important reasons to doubt whether their results would extend to more general applications of voting by mail. In this paper, we isolate the effects of voting in mail ballot elections by taking advantage of a natural experiment in which voters are assigned in a nearly random process to vote by mail. We use matching methods to ensure that, in our analysis, the demographic characteristics of these voters mirror those of polling place voters who take part in the same elections. Drawing on data from a large sample of California counties in two general elections, we find that voting by mail does not deliver on the promise of greater participation in general elections. In fact, voters who are assigned to vote by mail turn out at lower rates than those who are sent to a polling place. Our analysis of a sample of local special elections, by contrast, indicates that voting by mail can increase turnout in these otherwise lowparticipation contests.

Using state-by-state voting data for U.S. presidential elections, we observe that voter turnout is a positive function of predicted closeness. To explain the strategic component of political participation, we develop a follow-the-leader model. Political leaders expend effort according to their chance of being pivotal, which depends on the expected closeness of the race (at both state and national levels) and how voters respond to their effort. Structural estimation supports this model. For example, a 1-percent increase in the predicted closeness at the state level stimulates leaders' efforts, which increases turnout by 0.34 percent. (JEL D72, C33, C72, H41)

Voter turnout in post-communist countries has exhibited wildly fluctuating patterns against a backdrop of economic and political volatility. In this article, we consider three explanations for this variation: a ''depressing disenchantment'' hypothesis that predicts voters are less likely to vote in elections when political and economic conditions are worse; a ''motivating disenchantment'' hypothesis that predicts voters are more likely to vote in elections when conditions are worse; and a ''stakes'' based hypothesis that predicts voters are more likely to vote in more important elections. Using an original aggregate-level cross-national time-series data set of 137 presidential and parliamentary elections in 19 post-communist countries, we find much stronger empirical support for the stakes-based approach to explaining variation in voter turnout than we do for either of the disenchantment-based approaches. Our findings offer a theoretically integrated picture of voter participation in the post-communist world, and, more broadly, contribute new insights to the general literature on turnout.

Following a Royal Edict to adopt universal suffrage in election for local government institutions, maiden elections were held in 199 gewogs (counties) in Bhutan in 2002 to elect their chief executives. This paper gives an account of this first time event in a country where most villagers had never seen secret ballots and poll booths. It synthesizes detailed data, mostly qualitative, collected soon after the election was over, and assesses aspects of electoral participation that His Majesty the King of Bhutan has introduced steadily to deepen democracy. Beginning with a glance at the territorial organization of the Bhutanese state within which the counties are embedded, the paper compares the electoral results with the relevant election rules.