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Many people consider voting the most important form of political participation in a democracy. To this point, no aggregate-level, cross-national studies have been done on the factors that affect voter turnout in Africa. This article seeks to fill the gap in the literature by examining the factors that influence voter turnout in sub-Saharan Africa's multiparty regimes that have had two consecutive elections since the democratic transitions in the 1990s. Many of the central findings of the research on voter turnout in other regions reappear in the examination of voter turnout in Africa. The authors find that two institutional variables—type of electoral formula and concurrency of presidential and legislative elections— have significant effects on electoral turnout. Media exposure has a significant positive relationship with voter turnout. The number of elections a polity has had also appears to affect levels of voter turnout.

DOES ECONOMIC ADVERSITY AFFECT WHETHER PEOPLE VOTE? DATA FROM THE NOVEMBER 1974 CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY ARE USED TO ESTIMATE THE EFFECT THAT UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY, AND A DECLINE IN FINANCIAL WELL-BEING HAVE ON VOTER TURNOUT. THESE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL FINDINGS ARE CORROBORATED WITH AGGREGATE TIME-SERIES DATA FROM PRESIDENTIAL AND MIDTERM ELECTIONS SINCE 1896.

THIS RESEARCH EXAMINES THE EFFECTS OF ELECTION CALENDARS AND BALLOT FORMS ON VOTER TURNOUT. THE BALLOT ATTRACTIVENESS HYPOTHESIS PREDICTS THAT CONCURRENT SENATORIAL AND GUBERNATORIAL RACES ON A PRESIDENTIAL-YEAR BALLOT INCREASE THE LIKELIHOOD THAT CITIZENS WILL VOTE. THE EVIDENCE IN 1980 IS THAT THIS HYPOTHESIS IS TRUE WITH RESPECT TO GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS. THE ELECTION FREQUENCY HYPOTHESIS PREDICTS THAT THE MORE FREQUENTLY ELECTIONS ARE SCHEDULED, THE LESS LIKELY IT IS THAT CITIZENS WILL VOTE IN ANY OF THEM. PRESIDENTIAL AND STATE PRIMARIES ARE A MAJOR SOURCE OF FREQUENT ELECTIONS. IN 1980, PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES, IN PARTICULAR THOSE INSTITUTED SINCE 1968, DID DEPRESS TURNOUT. RUNOFF PRIMARIES DEPRESSED TURNOUT AS WELL. STATE PRIMARIES HELD SEPARATELY FROM PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES DID NOT DEPRESS TURNOUT BY AN ADDITIONAL SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT. THESE FINDINGS ARE BASED ON VALIDATED TURNOUT IN THE 1980 CPS ELECTION STUDY.

Despite relatively favorable citizen attitudes, voter turnout in American national elections is far below the average of 80% of the eligible electorate that votes in other industrialized democracies. The American institutional setting—particularly the party system and the registration laws—severely inhibits voter turnout, and probably also accounts for the unusual degree to which education and other socioeconomic resources are directly linked to voting participation in the United States.Using a combination of aggregate and comparative survey data, the present analysis suggests that in comparative perspective, turnout in the United States is advantaged about 5% by political attitudes, but disadvantaged 13% by the party system and institutional factors, and up to 14% by the registration laws. The experience of other democracies suggests that encouraging voter participation would contribute to channeling discontent through the electoral process. Even a significantly expanded American electorate would be more interested and involved in political activity than are present voters in most other democracies.

This article treats Manitoba as a case study in the community-level factors influencing the rate of voter turnout. Combining data from Elections Manitoba and the Manitoba Bureau of Statistics, it consists of an ecological analysis of electoral participation among the province's fifty-seven constituencies from 1999 to 2007. The study reveals that, while conventional variables like age and affluence play a role, the competitiveness of the constituency is by far the most important factor in determining a district's rate of voter turnout. This finding required analysts to shift their focus to "competitiveness" as the dependent variable, which, in turn, revealed that the best predictor of a district's competitiveness was how close the race was in the previous election. The centrality of competitiveness to voter turnout in Manitoba raises important challenges for election officials and reform advocates, as it adds a dynamic, contextual variable that is difficult to manipulate.

This research examines the effects of election calendars and ballot forms on voter turnout. The ballot attractiveness hypothesis predicts that concurrent senatorial and gubernatorial races on a presidential-year ballot increase the likelihood that citizens will vote. The evidence in 1980 is that this hypothesis is true with respect to gubernatorial elections. The election frequency hypothesis predicts that the more frequently elections are scheduled, the less likely it is that citizens will vote in any of them. Presidential and state primaries are a major source of frequent elections. In 1980, presidential primaries, in particular those instituted since 1968, did depress turnout. Runoff primaries depressed turnout as well. State primaries held separately from presidential primaries did not depress turnout by an additional significant amount. These findings are based on validated turnout in the 1980 CPS Election Study.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and disproportionately imprisons minorities, particularly African-Americans. Research shows that incarceration has many impacts on the individuals and families affected. One important question is whether high rates of incarceration silence the voices of minority communities by discouraging voting, affecting the structure of the political system. We use county-level data from 2010-2018 to study the impact of incarceration on the voter turnout rate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. We find that incarceration has an insignificant effect on voter turnout after controlling for other demographic variables. However, the impacts of incarceration may operate through other channels, impacting demographic characteristics such as income and education. Thus, further research is needed to determine the effects of mass incarceration on voter engagement.

I place national turnout rates in historical perspective and investigate what state turnout rates may tell us about what factors are related to higher levels of voter participation. In midterm elections compared to presidential election, voter turnout is lower among all groups, but more so for young people. I discuss the implications of younger citizens' disengagement in midterm elections in light of an increasing gap in support for the political parties' candidates among the young and the old. Adapted from the source document.

In recent decades, liberal democracies have considerably expanded the scope for citizen participation, calling their citizens to vote in a growing number of popular votes. This research investigates the effects of the rising election frequency on electoral participation. It expands on the voting calculus and theorizes which, when, and how past votes affect current voter turnout. We argue that all election types contribute to a common factor of election frequency, whose high values depress turnout and reduce the effectiveness of party mobilization even in the most important elections. We find support for the new theory using an original database of all significant elections and referendums held in 22 European democracies between 1939 and 2019, two natural experiments, and survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Our findings shed light on contemporary participation trends and have major implications for democratic citizenship and democratic institutional engineering.

Previous studies have stressed the role of a child's family environment for future political participation. This field of research has, however, overlooked that children within the same family have different experiences depending on their birth order. First-borns spend their first years of life without having to compete over their parents' attention and resources, while their younger siblings are born into potential rivalry. We examine differences in turnout depending on birth order, using unique population-wide individual level register data from Sweden and Norway that enables precise within-family estimates. We consistently find that higher birth order entails lower turnout, and that the turnout differential with respect to birth order is stronger when turnout is lower. The link between birth order and turnout holds when we use data from four other, non-Nordic countries. This birth order effect appears to be partly mediated by socio-economic position and attitudinal predispositions.