IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/wzbisi/spi2009206.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Estimating the potential impact of nonvoters on outcomes of parlimentary elections in proportional systems with the applications to German national elections from 1949 to 2005

Author

Listed:
  • Kohler, Ulrich

Abstract

"If [voter] turnout was 100%, would it affect the election result?" (Bernhagen and Marsh 2007) is a frequently asked research question. So far, the question has been primarily answered regarding the changes in the distribution of votes. This article extends the analysis to changes in the distribution of seats and government formation. It proposes a method that factors in apportionment methods, barring clauses, size of parliaments, leverage of nonvoters, closeness of election results, and individual characteristics of nonvoters. The method is then applied to German national elections from 1949 to 2005. The application shows that Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) would have gained from the counterfactual participation of nonvoters, although usually not enough to result in a government change. However by the 1994 and 2005 elections evidence shows that such a government change could have happened.

Suggested Citation

  • Kohler, Ulrich, 2009. "Estimating the potential impact of nonvoters on outcomes of parlimentary elections in proportional systems with the applications to German national elections from 1949 to 2005," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Inequality and Social Integration SP I 2009-206, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:wzbisi:spi2009206
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/44140/1/620008067.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brunell, Thomas L. & DiNardo, John, 2004. "A Propensity Score Reweighting Approach to Estimating the Partisan Effects of Full Turnout in American Presidential Elections," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 28-45, January.
    2. Powell, G. Bingham, 1986. "American Voter Turnout in Comparative Perspective," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(1), pages 17-43, March.
    3. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    4. Kohler, Ulrich & Rose, Richard, 2008. "Election outcomes and maximizing turnout: Modelling the effect," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Inequality and Social Integration SP I 2008-203, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. André Blais & Eric Guntermann & Vincent Arel-Bundock & Ruth Dassonneville & Jean-François Laslier & Gabrielle Péloquin-Skulski, 2020. "Party Preference Representation," PSE Working Papers halshs-02946659, HAL.
    2. Schäfer, Armin, 2011. "Republican liberty and compulsory voting," MPIfG Discussion Paper 11/17, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    3. Ibarzabal Laka, Nora & Laruelle, Annick, 2015. "Ghost seats in the Basque Parliament," IKERLANAK info:eu-repo/grantAgreeme, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico I.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fernanda L L de Leon, 2013. "Adding Ideology to the Equation: New Predictions for Election Results under Compulsory Voting," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 044, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    2. Kohler, Ulrich & Rose, Richard, 2008. "Election outcomes and maximizing turnout: Modelling the effect," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Inequality and Social Integration SP I 2008-203, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    3. Shruthi Mohan Menon & Gerard Rassendren, 2022. "Analysis of determinants of voter turnout in Indian states for election years 1991–2019," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 24(1), pages 30-45, June.
    4. Danny Hayes & Seth C. McKee, 2009. "The Participatory Effects of Redistricting," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 1006-1023, October.
    5. Margarita Batlle (Editora), 2015. "Elecciones 2014 en Colombia: candidatos, estrategias y resultados," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Finanzas, Gobierno y Relaciones Internacionales, edition 1, number 94.
    6. Hoffman, Mitchell & León, Gianmarco & Lombardi, María, 2017. "Compulsory voting, turnout, and government spending: Evidence from Austria," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 103-115.
    7. Allison Dale & Aaron Strauss, 2009. "Don't Forget to Vote: Text Message Reminders as a Mobilization Tool," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 787-804, October.
    8. Tim Powlowski & Dennis Coates, 2013. "The habit for voting, “civic duty” and travel distance," UMBC Economics Department Working Papers 13-05, UMBC Department of Economics.
    9. Martins, Rodrigo & Veiga, Francisco José, 2014. "Does voter turnout affect the votes for the incumbent government?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 274-286.
    10. Konstantinou, Panagiotis Th. & Panagiotidis, Theodore & Roumanias, Costas, 2021. "State-dependent effect on voter turnout: The case of US House elections," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 753-765.
    11. Aziz N. Berdiev & Chun-Ping Chang, 2013. "Explaining Voter Turnout in Taiwan Legislative Elections," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(4), pages 645-661, December.
    12. Rodrigo Martins & Francisco Veiga, 2013. "Economic performance and turnout at national and local elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 429-448, December.
    13. Jaitman, Laura, 2013. "The causal effect of compulsory voting laws on turnout: Does skill matter?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 79-93.
    14. De Benedetto, Marco Alberto & De Paola, Maria, 2019. "Term limit extension and electoral participation. Evidence from a diff-in-discontinuities design at the local level in Italy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 196-211.
    15. Lyytikäinen, Teemu & Tukiainen, Janne, 2019. "Are voters rational?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 230-242.
    16. Ondrej Kuba & Jan Stejskal, 2021. "Economic and Political Consequences of the Compulsory Voting in Public Parliamentary Elections: Czech Case Study," Economies, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-15, April.
    17. William H. Kaempfer & Anton D. Lowenberg, 1993. "A Threshold Model of Electoral Policy and Voter Turnout," Rationality and Society, , vol. 5(1), pages 107-126, January.
    18. Rodrigo Martins & Francisco José Veiga, 2012. "Turnout and the modeling of economic conditions: Evidence from Portuguese elections," NIPE Working Papers 01/2012, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    19. Mijeong Baek, 2009. "A Comparative Analysis of Political Communication Systems and Voter Turnout," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(2), pages 376-393, April.
    20. Fernanda Leite Lopez Leon & Renata Rizzi, 2016. "Does forced voting result in political polarization?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 143-160, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:zbw:wzbisi:spi2009206. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/uswzbde.html .

    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.