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Understanding the factors that influence voter turnout is a fundamentally important question in public policy and political science research. Bayesian logistic regression models are useful for incorporating individual level heterogeneity to answer these and many other questions. When these questions involve incorporating individual level heterogeneity for large data sets that include many demographic and ethnic subgroups, however, standard Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling methods to estimate such models can be quite slow and impractical to perform in a reasonable amount of time. We present an innovative closed form Empirical Bayesian approach that is significantly faster than MCMC methods, thus enabling the estimation of voter turnout models that had previously been considered computationally infeasible. Our results shed light on factors impacting voter turnout data in the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections. We conclude with a discussion of these factors and the associated policy implications. We emphasize, however, that although our application is to the social sciences, our approach is fully generalizable to the myriads of other fields involving statistical models with binary dependent variables and high-dimensional parameter spaces as well.

An increasing number of countries have granted electoral rights to their citizens living abroad. An understanding of the different dimensions of the electoral behaviour of migrants and the institutional characteristics of their countries of origin and residence is crucial for their political integration and (re-)socialization. Based on an aggregate-level design, this article evaluates the impact of compulsory voting on non-resident citizens’ voter turnout taking into account both origin and residence country contexts, providing insights into the dual context of political transnationalism. It explores the participation of Latin American migrants residing in Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands in all their national and supranational elections since 2005, creating singular electoral environments where the voting obligation varies in the countries of origin and residence. The article finds that compulsory voting has a positive impact on non-resident citizens’ voter turnout and suggests trends of analysis of prospective electoral behaviour in a dual institutional context.

Polarisation is often seen as mainly negative for the functioning of democracies, but one of its saving graces could be that it raises the stakes of politics and encourages participation. This study explores the relationship between affective polarisation and turnout using three longitudinal designs. It makes use of three decades of repeated cross-sectional surveys in Germany, a two-wave panel study in Spain, and an eleven-wave panel study in the Netherlands. It tests whether affective polarisation increases turnout using varying operationalizations and specifications, and studies whether any boost in participation extends beyond the most politically sophisticated citizens. The findings suggest a sizeable independent effect of affective polarisation on turnout even when accounting for reverse causality and for the confounding impact of positive partisanship and ideological polarisation. Importantly, this effect might even be somewhat more pronounced among those who are least sophisticated. The concluding section discusses the normative and theoretical implications of these findings.

This article considers the potential impact of two relatively new ways that state election officials have attempted to improve the registration of voters in their states: namely, through online reg...

Under what conditions do means-tested programs increase beneficiaries’ political participation? Recent scholarship has begun to shed light on this question through a series of causal studies of Med...

What is the effect of residing in ethnic enclaves on immigrants’ future political participation? We study a comprehensive refugee placement reform that was implemented in Sweden in the mid-1980s in...

The link between childhood mental health difficulties such as conduct problems and adult political abstention has been overlooked despite early mental health difficulties potentially resulting in political self-marginalisation. Using the1970s British Cohort Study, we estimate developmental trajectories of conduct problems (i.e., from 5 to 16 years). Logistic regression, linear probability models, and propensity score matching were then conducted to test the association between trajectory group membership and voter turnout at 30, 42, and 46 years of age. Three distinct trajectories of conduct problems were identified: a normative (n = 11,871; reference group), moderate-chronic (n = 3433), and elevated-chronic (n = 250) group. Results revealed an association between conduct problems and decreased turnout. In particular the elevated-chronic group had a decreased odds of voting of 52.2%, 52.0%, and 45.7%, as compared to the normative group at 30, 42, and 46 years respectively. The moderate-chronic group had a decreased odds of voting of 24.7% as compared to the normative group at age 30 only. Matched results and linear probability models substantiated findings, suggesting (1) the importance of considering childhood factors when examining antecedents of lifelong voting behaviour, and (2) the political self-marginalisation of people with chronic childhood conduct problems more than 3 decades later.

Africa reportedly exhibits lower overall levels of electoral integrity compared to other world regions. Remedying this situation has occasioned an explosion in the adoption of election technology. In 2023, Nigeria joined the wave of election digitalisation by holding its most technologically advanced polls since the inception of the Fourth Republic. But evidence from the elections contradicts the much-touted credibility guarantees that such technology comes with. Previous elections in Nigeria have witnessed a consistent decline in voter participation. Turnout in the just-ended 2023 presidential elections was a paltry 29 per cent, down from 69 per cent in 2003 and 53 per cent in 2011. Popular distrust in the electoral process generally, and in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) particularly, has seen voter apathy in recent elections reach record levels. To salvage this situation, Nigeria has adopted digital technology to, among other things, enhance transparency and integrity in the electoral process and boost popular confidence in the INEC. Digital technology is expected to guarantee a credible electoral roll and bring some robustness to voter-accreditation processes, while simultaneously enabling public access to results in real time. However, the technology deployed in the 2023 elections proved to be insufficient in resolving these credibility deficits. Aside from the multiple technical challenges that bedevilled the technology in the course of these elections, voter turnout was the lowest in the history of the Fourth Republic and popular trust in the electoral process and the INEC does not seem salvageable in the short term. Ensuring that digital technologies guarantee credible elections in sub-Saharan Africa requires governments, democracy promoters, civil society groups, and international organisations prioritise election cybersecurity, build up local technical capacities, and focus on Election Management Bodies becoming more transparent, especially regarding the use of such technology.

The article aims to show the main political-geographic trends of the 2020 parliamentary elections in Georgia. The political systems of the post-Soviet counties are still imperfect and fragile. Although international observers recognised the vote results in Georgia as legitimate, many opposition parties boycotted the parliament for almost six months. It took several western officials to engage in regulating the post-election crisis. The work focuses on analysing turnout and voting patterns pointing to the changes that occurred in the last decade. A geographical study of elections enables one to identify the merits and drawbacks of the electoral process from the regional standpoint. The findings of the work underline the complexity of the election outcomes. While certain legal and political changes bring Georgia closer to European democracies, the country still lags in terms of several electoral/geographical features.

This article presents evidence that exposure to officer-involved deaths of low-threat Black victims increases political interest and voter turnout among Black respondents under age 40 to the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey. Victim race, threat level, and visibility affect the likelihood that an officer-involved death will mobilize political interest. Political interest and voter turnout are higher among the treatment group, which was exposed to high-visibility/low-threat Black victims only before participating in the CMPS, than in the control group, which was exposed to such victims only after taking the survey. Exposing young Black respondents to all victims without accounting for threat, visibility, or race does not affect political interest or voter turnout, suggesting the importance of these factors for mobilization. The findings clarify the role that Black Lives Matter activists, journalists, and watchdog groups can play in countering the police actions that shape the visibility and framing of Black victims of police violence.

Is there a gender gap in voting? Most cross-national survey research on gender inequalities in voter turnout finds that men have a higher probability to vote than women. Yet, some studies using validated turnout data shed some doubt on this finding. We revisit the question of a gender gap in voting using official records. In more detail, we compare the gender gap in turnout between survey data and official electoral figures across 73 elections. Our results highlight that in surveys, men still report higher turnout in most countries. However, official electoral figures reveal contrasting trends: across countries, women are, on average, more likely to vote. We also test two explanations for this difference in turnout between official figures and surveys: (1) men over-report voting more than women and (2) the survey samples of men and women are different. We find some, albeit very moderate, evidence for the first explanation and no support for the second explanation. All in all, our research nevertheless suggests that scholars should be careful in using surveys to detect gender differences in voting.

We study how voter turnout affects the aggregation of preferences in elections. Under voluntary voting, election outcomes disproportionately aggregate the preferences of voters with low voting cost and high preference intensity. We show identification of the correlation structure among preferences, costs, and perceptions of voting efficacy, and explore how the correlation affects preference aggregation. Using 2004 US presidential election data, we find that young, low-income, less-educated, and minority voters are underrepresented. All of these groups tend to prefer Democrats, except for the less educated. Democrats would have won the majority of the electoral votes if all eligible voters had turned out. (JEL D12, D72)

In recent years, housing costs have outpaced incomes in the United States, resulting in millions of eviction filings each year. Yet no study has examined the link between eviction and voting. Drawing on a novel data set that combines tens of millions of eviction and voting records, this article finds that residential eviction rates negatively impacted voter turnout during the 2016 presidential election. Results from a generalized additive model show eviction’s effect on voter turnout to be strongest in neighborhoods with relatively low rates of displacement. To address endogeneity bias and estimate the causal effect of eviction on voting, the analysis treats commercial evictions as an instrument for residential evictions, finding that increases in neighborhood eviction rates led to substantial declines in voter turnout. This study demonstrates that the impact of eviction reverberates far beyond housing loss, affecting democratic participation.

In most democracies, citizens who identify with a political party are more likely than non-partisans to turn out to vote. But why is this the case? Does voting foster partisanship, as prominent models of political learning and cognitive dissonance postulate? Or does partisanship encourage voting, as expressive voting models and social identity theory suggest? I introduce the concept of partisan duty to capture the role of partisan social identities in the turnout decision and present new empirical tests of the relationship between partisanship and voting. I leverage a unique institutional arrangement in Chile to establish the direction of causality with a regression discontinuity, and I implement a novel survey design with behavioral outcomes to identify causal mechanisms. Data from the US confirm that the main findings generalize beyond Chile. Electoral participation does not generate partisanship. Instead, partisanship mobilizes voters: it increases the expressive benefits to voting and generates a sense of duty to support one’s partisan group.

Most literature on special elections has focused on first-past-the-post contests and on the performance of governments. Turnout, candidates, and how the electoral system impacts the result have received less attention. This contribution fills these voids by exploring special elections in Ireland, elections conducted under the alternative vote system. Taking a multifaceted approach, it investigates the correlates of turnout, the impact of candidates and the decisive effect of lower preferences, while also testing multiple explanations of government performance. I find Irish special elections live up to the by-election truisms of lower turnout and government loss. Government performance is associated with national economic conditions. By-election victory is more likely among candidates with familial lineage and former members of parliament. Where they come into play, one in five candidates owe their victory to lower preferences.

This article clarifies how political mobilization affects voter turnout in a post-conflict society by analyzing the Iraqi case using survey data. Voter turnout was high in post-war Iraq. However, the voter turnout in the fourth election, held in May 2018, declined by 20 percentage points from the previous one in 2014, mainly because of widespread political distrust due to corruption among political elites and their embezzlement of public funds, neglect of the people, and the breakdown of social services after the intensive operation against the so-called Islamic State (IS). Political mobilization during electoral campaigns usually encourages voters to go to polling stations. Notwithstanding, amid widespread political distrust in a post-conflict society, how does political mobilization affect voters’ behavior in elections? To answer this research question, we conducted a survey experiment during the 2018 electoral campaign to scrutinize the effects of political mobilization on voters in Iraq. Through quantitative analysis of the survey data, we demonstrated that voters are more likely to refrain from visiting polling stations if they are mobilized by political parties during a campaign. Thus, political mobilization discourages voters from participating in elections when there is extensive political distrust.

In light of the unexpectedly high turnout in the 2019 European Parliament election, we explore how major transnational policy issues mobilize voters in European electoral contests. Based on the analysis of two data sets, the Eurobarometer post-election survey and the RECONNECT panel survey, we make three important observations. First, European citizens show a higher tendency to participate in European Parliament elections when they attribute greater importance to the issues ‘climate change and environment’, ‘economy and growth’, and ‘immigration’. Second, having a more extreme opinion on the issue of ‘European integration’ increases people's likelihood to vote in European elections. Third, the mobilizing effect of personal issue importance is enhanced by the systemic salience that the respective policy issue has during the election campaign. These findings show the relevance of issue mobilization in European Parliament elections as well as its context-dependent nature.

While much attention has been paid to understanding the drivers of support for Donald Trump, less focus has been placed on understanding the factors that led individuals to turn out and vote or stay home. This paper compares non-voters and voters in the 2016 election and explores how self-reported candidate preference prior to the election predicted turnout across three different state contexts: (1) all states, (2) closely contested states won by Trump, and (3) closely contested states won by Clinton. We find that preference for both candidates predicted turnout in the aggregate (all states) and in closely contested states won by Clinton, but only preference for Trump predicted turnout in the closely contested states won by Trump. Moreover, we find that political interest is negatively associated with preference for Clinton when examining candidate preferences among non-voters. Our analysis suggests that non-voters in the 2016 election held meaningful candidate preferences that impacted voter turnout but that state context played an important role in this relationship. This study sheds light on an understudied component of the 2016 election, the attitudes and behavior of non-voters, as well as points to the importance of incorporating contextual variation in future work on electoral behavior and voter turnout.

Why has voter turnout declined in democracies all over the world? This article draws on findings from microlevel studies and theorizes two explanations: generational change and a rise in the number of elective institutions. The empirical section tests these hypotheses along with other explanations proposed in the literature—shifts in party/candidate competition, voting-age reform, weakening group mobilization, income inequality, and economic globalization. The authors conduct two analyses. The first analysis employs an original data set covering all post-1945 democratic national elections. The second studies individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and British, Canadian, and US national election studies. The results strongly support the generational change and elective institutions hypotheses, which account for most of the decline in voter turnout. These findings have important implications for a better understanding of the current transformations of representative democracy and the challenges it faces.

Low and uneven turnout is a serious problem for local democracy. Fortunately, one simple reform—shifting the timing of local elections so they are held on the same day as national contests—can substantially increase participation. Considerable research shows that on-cycle November elections generally double local voter turnout compared with stand-alone local contests. But does higher turnout mean a more representative electorate? On that critical question, the evidence is slim and mixed. We combine information on election timing with detailed microtargeting data that includes voter demographic information to examine how election timing influences voter composition in city elections. We find that moving to on-cycle elections in California leads to an electorate that is considerably more representative in terms of race, age, and partisanship—especially when these local elections coincide with a presidential election. Our results suggest that on-cycle elections can improve local democracy.

Gender gaps in voter turnout are usually studied using opinion surveys rather than official census data. This is because administrative censuses usually do not disaggregate turnout according to voters’ sex. Without this official information, much of the research on gender gaps in electoral turnout relies on survey respondents’ self-reported behavior, either before or after an election. The decision to use survey data implies facing several potential drawbacks. Among them are the turnout overstatement bias and the attrition or nonresponse bias, both affecting the estimation of factors explaining turnout and any related statistical analysis. Furthermore, these biases may be correlated with covariates such as gender: men, more than women, may systematically overstate their electoral participation. We analyze turnout gender gaps in Chile, comparing national surveys with official administrative data, which in Chile are publicly available. Crucially, the latter includes the official record of sex, age, and the electoral behavior—whether the individual voted or not—for about 14 million registered individuals. Based on a series of statistical models, we find that analysis based on survey data is likely to rule out gender gaps in electoral participation. Carrying out the same exercises, but with official data, leads to the opposite conclusion, namely, that there is a sizable gender gap favoring women.

The decline of voter turnout in Portugal was confirmed in the legislative election of 2015. The unquestionable democratic value associated with the act of voting, leads to the discussion of this is...

This research argues that implementing the electronic voting (e-voting) system in Indonesia is urged following the nation's first-ever 2019 simultaneous elections, which cost a deadly price of 527 election official lives of reported extreme fatigue during and after the event. Billed as "the world's most complex election", it has reached a consensus that the current manual election system, in which five different paper-based elections are voted at a time, has to be changed. Not to mention that the long-time gap between the voting day and the result announcement may create an opportunity for election fraud. This is evidenced by loads of electoral dispute lawsuits from the previous election brought to the Constitutional Court of Indonesia accused the others of cheating. This research stresses that despite the controversies of whether Indonesia, an archipelagic country with more than 17 thousand islands and 267 million people, is ready for e-voting. Whether the application of technology is an appropriate response to the election problems? E-voting is desired as a long-term solution and intends to solve many issues such as speeding the counting of ballots, reducing the cost of elections, providing accessibility for disabled voters, and increasing overall voter turnout.

Scholars have argued that becoming a parent affects political behavior, including turnout. In this article, we identify the effect on turnout of having an additional child conditional on the decision to become a parent. When parents have a child, nature sometimes assigns additional children through twinning. We argue that conditional on age of parents and birth cohort this as-if randomly assigns an extra child to some parents. With a large data set of family composition and validated turnout for Danish voters, we find, consistent with additional children taking up parents’ time and indirectly increasing the cost of voting, that having an additional child at the same time as another depresses turnout for both parents. Mothers who had twins in their first parity are 1.6 to 3.0 percentage points less likely to vote across three elections. For fathers, turnout is only depressed by 0.7 to 1.4 percentage points.

This research project is concerned with the possible relationship between loneliness and the individuals’ personal values. As Schwartz summarizes, from the very beginning of social sciences, scholars identified values as crucial for explaining social and personal organizations and changes. Likewise, human values are associated with political attitudes such as conservatism and need for control, conformity or open mindedness. In this research project, the impact of loneliness on the individual’s value system is investigated.

Goal of the Project: The Project investigates the causal relationship between loneliness (perceived social isolation) and political attitudes. To be precise, the experiment investigates the relationship between loneliness, sense of duty to vote and personal relevance of electoral outcomes.

Goal of the Project: The Project investigates the causal relationship between loneliness and attitudes towards political protests. To be specific, the study investigates whether lonely individuals perceive political protest as a platform for social re-affiliation.

This experimental survey examines the extent to which culturally relevant sources can more effectively reduce beliefs in misinformation among Black and Latino Americans. , we constructed an image that looked like a Facebook post containing misinformation specifically targeted to depress turnout among Latino (Experiment 1) and Black (Experiment 2) Americans.

Scholars and practitioners have long understood the importance of mobilization for increasing voter turnout, particularly the power of personal contact to increase voter participation in low-propen...

In many democracies, voter turnout is higher among the rich than the poor. But do changes in income lead to changes in electoral participation? We address this question with unique administrative data matching a decade of individual tax records with voter rolls in a large municipality in northern Italy. We document several important findings. First, levels of income and turnout both dropped disproportionately among relatively poor citizens following the Great Recession. Second, we show that within-individual changes in income have an effect on participation, which is modest on average due to diminishing returns, but can be consequential among the poor. Third, we find that declining turnout of voters facing economic insecurity has exacerbated the income skew in participation, suggesting that income inequality and turnout inequality may reinforce each other. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results, set in a context with strong civic traditions and low barriers to voting.

In the United States, drop box mail-in voting has increased, particularly in the all vote by mail (VBM) states of Washington, Colorado, Utah, and Oregon. To assess if drop boxes improve voter turnout, research proxies box treatment by voters’ residence distance to nearest drop box. However, no research has tested the assumption that voters use drop boxes nearest their residence more so than they do other drop boxes. Using individual-level voter data from a 2020 Washington State election, we show that voters are more likely to use the nearest drop box to their residence relative to other drop boxes. In Washington’s 2020 August primary, 52% of drop box voters in our data used their nearest drop box. Moreover, those who either (1) vote by mail, or (2) used a different drop box from the one closest to their residence live further away from their closest drop box. Implications are discussed.

This study examines whether infrastructure and processes at polling places vary by the race and income of the community where polls are located and whether voting infrastructure and process...

A growing body of scholarship suggests that Indigenous peoples abstain from voting in national and subnational elections because of colonialism and so classic determinants of turnout do not apply. ...

This study examined associations between diagnoses with five chronic health conditions (diabetes, cancer, heart disease, asthma, and arthritis) and turnout in the 2012 US presidential election. We used cross-sectional survey data from 16 states from the 2013 and 2014 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. We estimated a logistic regression model with the main dependent variable as a survey item asking respondents if they voted. We also estimated logistic regression models stratified by race/ethnicity to assess whether the chronic health condition–turnout relationships varied within each racial/ethnic group. Results show that individuals diagnosed with diabetes were 7 percentage-points more likely to vote that those who were not. Stratified models revealed these diabetes–turnout relationships are particularly strong among those who identified as Hispanic and multiracial. Other health characteristics demonstrated consistency with previous literature, including lower self-rated health being associated with lower odds of turnout. Our research suggests an intriguing new relationship between the experience of diabetes and a higher propensity to vote and that different chronic health conditions have varying associations with the likelihood to vote, implying that some groups are more vulnerable to being underrepresented in politics.

This article offers a novel theorisation of voter turnout by looking at electoral revolutions, i.e. large rapid changes in electoral participation. Since voting is conceptualised as a habit, turnout is generally seen as static, with its small and large variations dismissed as context-dependent. Instead, this work’s main hypothesis is that dramatic voter turnout variations follow rapid transformations in the credibility and competition of national politics. These transformations are reconstructed by following the national political process in the years preceding the electoral revolutions that took place in France (1967), Britain (2001), Honduras (2013) and Costa Rica (1998). Moving from a capacious framework, this article’s parsimonious theory shows how electoral revolutions follow the strengthening/weakening of oppositions, increasing/decreasing institutional credibility and growing/waning party system differentiation.

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.

We analyze the results of a neighbor-to-neighbor, grassroots get-out-the-vote (GOTV) drive in Virginia, in which unpaid volunteers were encouraged to contact at least three nearby registered voters who were likely co-partisans yet relatively unlikely to vote in the 2017 state election. To measure the campaign’s effectiveness, we used a pairwise randomization design whereby each volunteer was assigned to one randomly selected member of the most geographically proximate pair of voters. Because some volunteers unexpectedly signed up to participate outside their home districts, we analyze the volunteers who adhered to the original hyper-local program design separately from those who did not. We find that the volunteers in the original program design drove a statistically significant 2.3% increase in turnout, which was concentrated in the first voter pair assigned to each volunteer. We discuss implications for the study and design of future GOTV efforts.

In models of voter participation, the effects of election margin and campaign expenditure can be shown to be state-dependent – varying with low/high turnout. We empirically assess these implications for observed turnout, employing data from US House elections from 2000 to 2008 by means of quantile regression analysis. We document that the effects of expected election margin and campaign spending on turnout are state-dependent: the later is positive and decreasing, whereas the former is negative and U-shaped. Other determinants’ influence on turnout (e.g. education, population density) is also shown to vary across the conditional distribution of turnout rate. Our findings are robust to a number of extensions.

Previous research into the relationship between income inequality and turnout inequality has produced mixed results, as consensus is lacking whether inequality reduces turnout for all income groups, low-income earners, or no one. Therefore, this paper builds on this literature by introducing supply-side logic, through the first individual-level test of the impact that income inequality (moderated by policy manifesto positions) has on turnout. It does so through multilevel logistic regressions utilizing mixed effects, on a sample of 30 advanced democracies in 102 elections from 1996 to 2016. It finds that higher levels of income inequality significantly reduce turnout and widen the turnout gap between rich and poor. However, it also finds that when party systems are more polarized, low-income earners are mobilized the greatest extent coupled with higher inequality, resulting in a significantly reduced income gap in turnout. The findings magnify the negative impacts income inequality can exert on political behavior and contribute to the study of policy offerings as a key moderating mechanism in the relationship.

On December 9, 2020, people in Indonesia, especially in Central Kalimantan, participated in holding regional head elections simultaneously. In the Regional Election (Pilkada) on December 9 in Kalimantan, there were 2 elections, namely the regional head election for the governor and Deputy Governor of Central Kalimantan for the period 2021-2025 and the election for the regional head of the Regent/Deputy Regent for the period 2021-2025 in East Kotawaringin Regency. The hustle and bustle of implementing the simultaneous regional elections on 9 December 2020 has differences from the previous regional head elections, this is because the implementation of the 9 December 2020 regional elections was held amid the pandemic threat of covid-19 (coronavirus disease -19). Even though it went through a long process, the pros and cons covered the election policy for the simultaneous regions, in the end, the elections were still held on December 9, 2020. Apart from Central Kalimantan, in Indonesia alone, there were around 270 regions that held simultaneous regional elections on 9 December 2020. The study in this paper wants to know how the regional head elections are held in Central Kalimantan, especially in the city of Palangka Raya. This is because Palangka Raya City has a history of the highest confirmed area of Covid-19 transmission. Besides, Palangka Raya as the capital of Central Kalimantan Province is a barometer of seeing the succession of simultaneous regional elections in Central Kalimantan. In its implementation, the Central Kalimantan Pilkada in Palangka Raya went well. The voter turnout in Palangka Raya City reached 63%. What is unique is that the regional elections in Central Kalimantan have increased participation amid a pandemic compared to the 2015 regional elections which were held in conditions without a pandemic. Even though the overall participation is below the target of the KPU RI, this increase needs to be appreciated.

We report the first study of the effect of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) on polling place consolidation and voting behavior. We draw upon individual-level observations from Milwaukee matched to similar observations in the surrounding municipalities to assess whether fewer polling places in the April 2020 presidential primary election decreased turnout in the city. We find polling place consolidation reduced overall turnout by about 8.7 points and reduced turnout among the Black population in the city by about 10 points. We conclude, based on these data, that polling place consolidation even accompanied by widespread absentee voting in the face of an emergency may result in disenfranchisement, particularly among Black voters.

Does party ambivalence, that is, simultaneously evaluating positively more than one political party, decrease turnout? The extant literature on this question is limited to the American case, and findings are rather mixed. Using the data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project, this paper provides a first large-scale comparative analysis of the ambivalence-turnout nexus in 46 countries. Based on two different ambivalence measures, I show that party ambivalence is more prevalent in multiparty systems and that a substantial portion of citizens are ambivalent. Moreover, ambivalence, on average, reduces turnout by at least 4.5 percentage points across countries. Importantly, however, this is not the case for every country. Whether ambivalence decreases voter turnout is conditioned by macro-level factors. More specifically, ambivalence tends to dampen turnout in (1) polarized contexts, (2) parliamentary systems, (3) voluntary voting countries, and (4) less fragmented systems.

How do changes in ethnic composition affect voter turnout? In Russia, a country that institutionalizes ethnicity through federalism, research demonstrates that geographically concentrated ethnic mi...

How, and under what conditions, does electoral violence influence voter turnout? Existing research often presumes that electoral violence demobilizes voters, but we lack knowledge of the conditions under which violence depresses turnout. This study takes a subnational approach to probe the moderating effect of local incumbent strength on the association between electoral violence and turnout. Based on existing work, I argue that electoral violence can reduce voter turnout by heightening threat perceptions among voters and eroding public trust in the electoral system, thereby raising the expected costs of voting and undermining the belief that one’s vote matters. Moreover, I propose that in elections contested across multiple local rather than a single national voting district, the negative effect of electoral violence on turnout should be greater in districts where the incumbent is stronger. This is because when the incumbent is stronger, voters have lesser strategic and purposive incentives to vote than voters in localities where the opposition is stronger. I test the argument by combining original subnational event data on electoral violence before Côte d’Ivoire’s 2021 legislative elections with electoral records. The results support the main hypothesis and indicate that electoral violence was associated with significantly lower voter turnout in voting districts where the incumbent was stronger, but not where the opposition was stronger. The study contributes new knowledge on the conditions under which electoral violence depresses voter turnout, and suggests that voters in opposition strongholds can be more resilient to electoral violence than often assumed.

Political scientists have largely overlooked the democratic challenges inherent in the governance of U.S. public education—despite profound implications for educational delivery and, ultimately, social mobility and economic growth. In this study, we consider whether the interests of adult voters who elect local school boards are likely to be aligned with the needs of the students their districts educate. Specifically, we compare voters and students in four states on several policy-relevant dimensions. Using official voter turnout records and rich microtargeting data, we document considerable demographic differences between voters who participate in school board elections and the students attending the schools that boards oversee. These gaps are most pronounced in majority nonwhite jurisdictions and school districts with the largest racial achievement gaps. Our novel analysis provides important context for understanding the political pressures facing school boards and their likely role in perpetuating educational and, ultimately, societal inequality.

Overall women turn out to vote at a higher rate than men, yet few studies have examined the consistency of this finding across American electoral contexts. We use voter file data to compare turnout...