Does Declining Voter Turnout Affect Election Results? An Analysis of Election Data from Districts in Major German Cities

Does declining voter turnout harm center-left parties? Although this is what many observers believe, most empirical studies fail to support this thesis. In contrast to this common wisdom, this article shows that there is a negative effect of turnout decline on the Social Democratic Party and the Lef...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPolitische Vierteljahresschrift Vol. 53; no. 2; pp. 240 - 264
Main Author Schafer, Armin
Format Journal Article
LanguageGerman
Published 01.01.2012
Subjects
Aggregate Data
Cities
Citizen Participation
Correlation
Data analysis
Districts
Elections
Electoral results
Federal Republic of Germany
Germany
Left Wing Politics
Measurement
Political apathy
Segregation
Social indicators
Urban areas
Voter Turnout
Voting turnout
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Summary:Does declining voter turnout harm center-left parties? Although this is what many observers believe, most empirical studies fail to support this thesis. In contrast to this common wisdom, this article shows that there is a negative effect of turnout decline on the Social Democratic Party and the Left Party in Germany. For the first time, this article analyzes systematically aggregate data of 1,500 urban quarters in 34 large German cities. It will be argued that the effects of social segregation and voter apathy become only visible on this small scale since social indicators and turnout data correlate very highly. Urban districts differ not only in their electoral participation but also in the election results. Left of center parties fare much better in areas that have experienced the strongest decline of turnout over the last three decades. Adapted from the source document.
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ISSN:0032-3470