When Do Close Elections Matter for Higher Turnout? Gauging the Impact of the Interaction Between Electoral Competitiveness and District Magnitude

Abstract

A conventional rational choice perspective assumes a positive relationship between close elections and higher turnout because of the increased probability that few votes might actually matter for the election outcome. However, this hypothesis should only hold in electoral districts where one or few candidates are elected. In contrast, close elections should have less of an impact in districts where many members are elected because these districts are characterized by a proportional translation of votes into seats. Testing the foregoing logic, this article evaluates the interactive influence between the closeness of an election and the district magnitude on turnout. The results of the multivariate regression analysis, which includes data for over 600 elections across the globe, support the idea that close elections boost electoral participation in districts with one or few elected members, but not in districts with many elected representatives.

Estimating the Effect of Competitiveness on Turnout across Regime Types

“…Both weekend voting and concurrent elections increase turnout rates (Blais, 2006;Carreras, 2018;Franklin, 2004;Martinez i Coma, 2016;Nikolenyi, 2010;Pintor and Gratschew, 2002). Finally, temporal variations may refer to declining turnout since the 1980s (Blais and Rubenson, 2013;Stockemer, 2015).…”

“…The margin of victory is the most common operationalisation of competitiveness (Geys, 2006: 647), where larger gaps indicate less competitive elections. It measures the gap between votes or vote shares of the winner and the runner-up and is used, for example, in the studies by Franklin (2004) and Stockemer (2015). However, the electoral gap between the two leading parties does not adequately measure competitiveness if there is an autocratic mimicry of multi-partyism.…”

“…Regarding the important effect of competitiveness, for democracies, close elections are found to increase turnout due to instrumental voting. However, previous findings on competitiveness in autocracies remain inconclusive (Martinez i Coma, 2016;Stockemer, 2015).…”

The Buck Stops with the Education Mayor: Mayoral Control and Local Test Scores in U.S. Urban Mayoral Elections

“…Arnold and Carnes () find, however, that citizens do reward or punish mayors for local economic conditions. Finally, we include a control for the competitiveness of the election, measured as it is in most research, by subtracting the closet losing candidate's vote share from the winning candidate's vote share (Cox ; Lindgren and Southwell ; Maeda ; Singh, Lago, and Blais ; Stockemer ) . Healy and Malhotra (, 286) contend that in many studies of retrospective voting, “[t]he effect sizes are often small, suggesting that [accountability] may make a difference only in close elections.” Many of these mayoral contests were fairly one‐sided: the average vote margin was 24.7 points.…”