How to Increase Turnout in Low-Salience Elections: Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Concurrent Second-Order Elections on Political Participation

Abstract

Voter turnout in second-order elections is on a dramatic decline in many modern democracies. This article investigates how electoral participation can be substantially increased by holding multiple of these less important elections simultaneously. Leading to a relative decrease in voting costs, concurrent elections theoretically have economies of scale to the individual voter and thus should see turnout levels larger than those obtained in any stand-alone election. Leveraging as-if-random variation of local election timing in Germany, we estimate the causal effect of concurrent mayoral elections on European election turnout at around 10 percentage points. Exploiting variation in treatment intensity, we show that the magnitude of the concurrency effect is contingent upon district size and the competitiveness of the local race.

Political efficacy and the persistence of turnout shocks

“…This first-stage effect is positive, highly significant (at the 0.1% level), and of an extremely large magnitude: It suggests that scheduling the Bürgermeister election concurrently with federal or state elections increases turnout by more than 16 percentage points. This turnout increase is thus much larger than the ones found for the combination of Bürgermeister elections with European elections or other local elections (Garmann, 2016;Leininger, Rudolph, & Zittlau, 2018). That this effect is large is important to make sure that a significant part of the electorate was incentivized by concurrent elections to go to the polls.…”

Does Election Salience Affect Immigrant Voter Turnout?

“…Although we are not aware of any well-identified studies that have examined this issue specifically, the question is closely related to the research on the impact of concurrent elections on turnout (e.g., Geys 2006). A key finding of these studies, which have employed both difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity designs, is that voter turnout in second-order elections, such as local elections, tends to increase substantially when they are held at the same time as first-order elections, such as national ones (e.g., Aggeborn 2016;Garmann 2016;Hajnal and Lewis 2003;Leininger, Rudolph, and Zittlau 2018).…”

Turnout in concurrent elections: Evidence from two quasi-experiments in Italy

“…Exploring the theoretical reasons for low and unequal participation, a growing literature highlights that many low-turnout countries, notably the U.S., display a high number and frequency of elections (e.g., Taylor et al, 2014). Frequent elections can reduce participation because more numerous elections increase information costs and require more time and effort from citizens (Leininger, Rudolph and Zittlau, 2016), potentially lowering voters' motivation to be civically engaged (Garmann, 2017). These negative effects tend to be particularly consequential in "secondorder" elections at the regional and local level, especially so if they are held "off-cycle" (Lijphart, 1997).…”

“…Yet, if election frequency increases the cost of participation, holding multiple elections concurrently seems a natural way to increase voter participation. Moreover, if different groups of voters care differentially about different elections, election timing may affect the composition of the electorate (Anzia, 2011;Halberstam and Montagnes, 2015;Leininger, Rudolph and Zittlau, 2016). Concurrent elections seem particularly promising to increase turnout among young voters, whose levels of participation are dismally low in many democracies (Hajnal and Trounstine, 2005;Kogan, Lavertu and Peskowitz, 2018).…”

“…In a meta-analysis, Geys (2006) showed that about half of surveyed studies found a positive and statistically significant association between concurrency and turnout, whereas the other half found either null or negative effects. Recent work leverages Differences-in-Differences (DD) designs and provides a robust body of empirical evi-dence showing that holding lower salience elections on the same day as higher salience elections may increase turnout in the U.S. (Anzia, 2011;Kogan, Lavertu and Peskowitz, 2018) and Europe (Fauvelle-Aymar and François, 2015;Garmann, 2016;Leininger, Rudolph and Zittlau, 2016).…”