IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v25y2024i3p549-568.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do (too many) elections depress participation? How the position, frequency and nature of domestic ballots affect turnout in European Parliament elections

Author

Listed:
  • François Briatte

    (European School of Political and Social Sciences, 27021Université catholique de Lille, Lille, France)

  • Camille Kelbel

    (European School of Political and Social Sciences, 27021Université catholique de Lille, Lille, France)

  • Julien Navarro

    (ETHICS EA 7446, 27021Université catholique de Lille, Lille, France)

Abstract

In Europe, the multiplication of elections makes the election calendar a decisive issue given the decreasing participatory trend. Turnout is expected to be higher in simultaneous elections, while it lessens if several elections are held over a short period. The saliency of the preceding ballot may also affect participation in the next one. In this article, we argue that these temporal effects are crucial for European Parliament elections due to their second-order nature. We analyse how the position, frequency and nature of domestic ballots affect European Parliament elections turnout since 1979. Our results indicate that the participation level is less affected by the timing of elections than by their overall frequency. The type of preceding election also matters, although not the second-order nature per se.

Suggested Citation

  • François Briatte & Camille Kelbel & Julien Navarro, 2024. "Do (too many) elections depress participation? How the position, frequency and nature of domestic ballots affect turnout in European Parliament elections," European Union Politics, , vol. 25(3), pages 549-568, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:25:y:2024:i:3:p:549-568
    DOI: 10.1177/14651165241257779
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14651165241257779
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/14651165241257779?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:25:y:2024:i:3:p:549-568. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.