Voter turnout
In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford University political scientists Adam Bonica and Michael McFaul, there is a consensus among political scientists that "democracies perform better when more people vote."
Institutional factors drive the vast majority of differences in turnout rates. For example, simpler parliamentary democracies where voters get shorter ballots, fewer elections, and a multi-party system that makes accountability easier see much higher turnout than the systems of the United States, Japan, and Switzerland.
Significance
Some parts of society are more likely to vote than others. As turnout approaches 90%, significant differences between voters and nonvoters lessen, but in lower turnout elections the differences between voters and nonvoters can be dramatic.More importantly than changes in specific election outcomes, voter turnout has seismic long-term implications on the abilities of democracies to function. For example, regulatory capture tends to afflict low-turnout democracies more, blocking popular democratic reforms like streamlining elections.
Measuring turnout
Differing methods of measuring voter turnout can contribute to reported differences between nations. There are difficulties in measuring both the numerator, the number of voters who cast votes, and the denominator, the number of voters eligible to vote. Surveys can result in inaccurate voter turnout estimates. In Sweden, validated individual-level turnout data is available for a subset of general and European Parliament elections, taken from Swedish election registers.Numerator (e.g. ballots cast)
Signed-in: includes people who signed-in at the polls, but did not cast a ballot.Ballots Cast: Total number of ballots cast, regardless of how many were filled-out or accepted.
Ballots Accepted: this subtracts spoilt votes but in some places includes blank ballots that were otherwise accepted.
Completed Ballots: This metric looks at ballots that were accepted and completed. This is the smallest numerator, but captures only those ballots that will impact the outcome of the election.
For the numerator, it is often assumed that the number of voters who went to the polls should equal the number of ballots cast, which in turn should equal the number of votes counted, but this is not the case. Not all voters who arrive at the polls necessarily cast ballots. Some may be turned away because they are ineligible, some may be turned away improperly, and some who sign the voting register may not actually cast ballots. Furthermore, voters who do cast ballots may abstain, deliberately voting for nobody, or they may spoil their votes, either accidentally or as an act of protest.
In the United Kingdom, the Electoral Commission distinguishes between "valid vote turnout", which excludes spoilt ballots, and "ballot box turnout", which does not.
In the United States, it has been common to report turnout as the sum of votes for the top race on the ballot, because not all jurisdictions report the actual number of people who went to the polls nor the number of undervotes or overvotes. Overvote rates of around 0.3 percent are typical of well-run elections, but in Gadsden County Florida, the overvote rate was 11 percent in November 2000.
Denominator (out of people)
Total population: everyone who lives in a place, regardless of age, citizenship status or other factors that affect voting eligibility. This has the advantage of being an accessible indicator of how close a place may be to universal suffrage.Voting-age population: everyone above the legal voting age in a country regardless of citizenship status or other factors that might affect voting eligibility. This has the advantage of being easier to measure than 'eligible voters.'
Eligible voters: This measures all the voters allowed to vote under current law, which in some places includes people who have not registered or re-registered to vote. This is more difficult to measure as more categories of people are disenfranchised and can include non-resident voters.
Registered voters: This measurement captures all who are registered to vote. This has the advantage of being easy to measure and readily accessible, though overlooks those who are unwilling or unable to register due to barriers such as a complex registration or re-registration process.
In the United States, for example, there is no accurate registry of exactly who is eligible to vote, since only about 70–75% of people choose to register themselves. Thus, turnout has to be calculated based on population estimates. Some political scientists have argued that these measures do not properly account for the large number of legal permanent residents, undocumented immigrants, disenfranchised felons and persons who are considered 'mentally incompetent' in the United States. Voter turnout everywhere would be higher if measured by eligibility and not voting-age population.
Even in countries with fewer restrictions on the franchise, voting age population turnout data can still be impacted by large numbers of non-citizen residents and non-resident citizens voting, often under-reporting turnout by as much as 10 percentage points. Professor Michael P. McDonald constructed an estimation of the turnout against the 'voting eligible population', instead of the 'voting age population'. For the American presidential elections of 2004, turnout could then be expressed as 60.32% of voting eligible population, rather than 55.27% of voting age population.
In New Zealand, registration is supposed to be universal. This does not eliminate uncertainty in the eligible population because this system has been shown to be unreliable, with a large number of eligible but unregistered citizens creating inflated turnout figures.
Factors
Various factors have an impact on voter turnout. Making voting compulsory has a direct and dramatic effect on turnout while adding barriers, such as a separate registration process or unnecessarily scheduling many elections, suppresses turnout. In addition, the closer democracies are to 'one person, one vote' increases turnout as voters see that their effort has an impact. This can be seen in the higher turnout rates of proportional parliamentary democracies.For some time, the Gallup Organization has utilized a metric of polls to determine who would vote. These polls would look at "intention to vote, registration status, reported frequency of past voting, awareness of where to vote, interest in politics in general, interest in the particular election, and intensity of candidate preference."
Since around 1985, there appears to be a gradual decrease in voter turnout globally when looking at the voting-age population. However, a 2001 article in the American Political Science Review, Michael McDonald and Samuel Popkin argued, that at least in the United States, voter turnout since 1972 has not actually declined when calculated for those eligible to vote, what they term the voting-eligible population. In 1972, noncitizens and ineligible felons constituted about 2% of the voting-age population. By 2004, ineligible voters constituted nearly 10%. Ineligible voters are not evenly distributed across the country – 20% of California's voting-age population is ineligible to vote – which confounds comparisons of states. Furthermore, they argue that an examination of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey shows that turnout is low but not declining among the youth, when the high youth turnout of 1972 is removed from the trendline.
Other forms of political participation have declined, such as voluntary participation in political parties and the attendance of observers at town meetings. Meanwhile, church attendance, membership in professional, fraternal, and student societies, youth groups, and parent-teacher associations has also declined. Some argue that technological developments in society such as "automobilization," suburban living, and "an explosive proliferation of home entertainment devices" have contributed to a loss of community, which in turn has weakened participation in civic life. Putnam argued increased television viewing might directly account for up to half the drop in social capital in the US. At the same time, some forms of participation have increased. People have become far more likely to participate in boycotts, demonstrations, and to donate to political campaigns.
Many causes have been proposed for what some see as a decline in voter participation though all offered in this section are heavily disputed. When asked why they do not vote, many people report that they have too little free time. James Sherk, member of conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation asserted that studies have consistently shown that the amount of leisure time has not decreased, even if the perception of less leisure time results in less participation. While wages and employment decrease voter turnout in gubernatorial elections, they appear to not affect national races. Geographic mobility has increased over the last few decades, bringing barriers to voting in a district where one is a recent arrival, including knowing little about the local candidates and issues. It has been argued that democratic consolidation contributes to the decline in voter turnout. A 2017 study challenges this, however.
Ease of voting
Other methods of making voting easier to increase turnout include vote-by-mail, absentee polling and improved access to polls, such as increasing the number of possible voting locations, lowering the average time voters wait in line, or requiring companies to give workers some time off on voting day. A 2017 study found that turnout among older voters increases the earlier polling places open, while turnout among younger voters improves the longer polling places stay open.A 2017 study in Electoral Studies found that Swiss cantons that reduced the costs of postal voting for voters by prepaying the postage on return envelopes were "associated with a statistically significant 1.8 percentage point increase in voter turnout". A 2016 study in the American Journal of Political Science found that preregistration – allowing young citizens to register before being eligible to vote – increased turnout by 2 to 8 percentage points. A 2019 study in Social Science Quarterly found that the introduction of a vote‐by‐mail system in Washington state led to an increase in turnout. Another 2019 study in Social Science Quarterly found that online voter registration increased voter turnout, in particular for young voters. A 2020 study in Political Behavior found that a single postcard by election officials to unregistered eligible voters boosted registration rates by a percentage point and turnout by 0.9 percentage points, with the strongest effects on young, first-time voters.
The availability of ballot drop boxes increases turnout.
A 2018 study in the British Journal of Political Science found that internet voting in local elections in Ontario, Canada, only had a modest impact on turnout, increasing turnout by 3.5 percentage points. The authors of the study say that the results "suggest that internet voting is unlikely to solve the low turnout crisis, and imply that cost arguments do not fully account for recent turnout declines."