Correlates of Voter Turnout
Date
2021-05-20
Authors
Frank, Richard
Martínez i Coma, Ferran
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer US
Abstract
Despite decades of research, there is no consensus as to the core correlates of national-level voter turnout. We argue that this is, in part, due to the lack of comprehensive, systematic empirical analysis. This paper conducts such an analysis. We identify 44 articles on turnout from 1986 to 2017. These articles include over 127 potential predictors of voter turnout, and we collect data on seventy of these variables. Using extreme bounds analysis, we run over 15 million regressions to determine which of these 70 variables are robustly associated with voter turnout in 579 elections in 80 democracies from 1945 to 2014. Overall, 22 variables are robustly associated with voter turnout, including compulsory voting, concurrent elections, competitive elections, inflation, previous turnout, and economic globalization.
Description
Keywords
Elections, Turnout, Extreme bounds analysis, Meta-analysis
Citation
Collections
Source
Political Behavior
Type
Journal article
Book Title
Entity type
Access Statement
Open Access
License Rights
Creative Commons