What aggregate data can tell us about voter turnout in Canada; did changes in the distribution of income matter?

J. Stephen Ferris and Marcel Voia

No 20-18, Carleton Economic Papers from Carleton University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Canada, like many developed economies, has experienced a decline in voter turnout since the early 1990s. This paper examines the extent to which aggregate data can explain the movement of voter turnout over time. Time series concerns suggest that OLS results indicating that changes in constituency size, the proportion of the population registered to vote, the degree of wealth inequality, the degree of political competition and the evolving interests of younger voters can all help to explain a good portion voter turnout over the post 1976 time period may be spurious. ARDL re-estimation re-establishes a narrower form of cointegration, confirming a number of hypotheses while rejecting the hypotheses that changes in the proportion of young people in the electorate and voter alienation, as proxied by the Gini coefficient, have played a significant role in affecting voter turnout in Canada.

Keywords: voter; turnout (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 H62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2020-10-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-pol
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Published: Carleton Economics Papers

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:car:carecp:20-18

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