TY - JOUR
T1 - Core and Peripheral Voters
T2 - Predictors of Turnout Across Three Types of Elections
AU - Bhatti, Yosef
AU - Dahlgaard, Jens Olav
AU - Hansen, Jonas Hedegaard
AU - Hansen, Kasper Møller
N1 - Published online: 9. April 2018
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - Citizens who abstain from voting in consecutive elections and inequality in turnout in democratic elections constitute a challenge to the legitimacy of democracy. Applying the law of dispersion, which stipulates higher levels of turnout and higher levels of equality in turnout are positively related, we study turnout patterns across different types of elections in Denmark, a high-turnout European context. Across three different elections with turnout rates from 56.3% to 85.9%, we use a rich, nationwide panel dataset of 2.1 million citizens with validated turnout and high-quality sociodemographic variables. A total of 9% of the citizens are abstainers in the three consecutive elections, and these are disproportionately male, of non-Western ethnic background, with little education, and with low income. The law of dispersion finds support as inequalities in turnout increase when turnout decreases and vice versa. Furthermore, municipalities with lower turnout have higher inequalities in participation than high-turnout municipalities in local elections.
AB - Citizens who abstain from voting in consecutive elections and inequality in turnout in democratic elections constitute a challenge to the legitimacy of democracy. Applying the law of dispersion, which stipulates higher levels of turnout and higher levels of equality in turnout are positively related, we study turnout patterns across different types of elections in Denmark, a high-turnout European context. Across three different elections with turnout rates from 56.3% to 85.9%, we use a rich, nationwide panel dataset of 2.1 million citizens with validated turnout and high-quality sociodemographic variables. A total of 9% of the citizens are abstainers in the three consecutive elections, and these are disproportionately male, of non-Western ethnic background, with little education, and with low income. The law of dispersion finds support as inequalities in turnout increase when turnout decreases and vice versa. Furthermore, municipalities with lower turnout have higher inequalities in participation than high-turnout municipalities in local elections.
KW - Voter turnout
KW - Participation
KW - Law of dispersion
KW - Inequality
KW - Voter turnout
KW - Participation
KW - Law of dispersion
KW - Inequality
UR - https://sfx-45cbs.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/45cbs?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&url_ctx_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info:sid/sfxit.com:azlist&sfx.ignore_date_threshold=1&rft.object_id=954925241050&rft.object_portfolio_id=&svc.holdings=yes&svc.fulltext=yes
U2 - 10.1177/0032321718766246
DO - 10.1177/0032321718766246
M3 - Journal article
VL - 67
SP - 348
EP - 366
JO - Political Studies
JF - Political Studies
SN - 0032-3217
IS - 2
ER -