The Blank and the Null: An examination of non-conventional voting choices

Rodrigo Martins

No 2017-06, CeBER Working Papers from Centre for Business and Economics Research (CeBER), University of Coimbra

Abstract: This paper analyses the determinants of null and blank voting at the 2011 Portuguese legislative elections. An extensive datasets at the parish level and a fractional regression model estimator are used to estimate both voting alternatives. The results found point to some common explanatory patterns as well as to important differences between the two choices. Evidence also indicates that the performance of the local economy, especially unemployment, is important but only for the explanation of blank variations and in more urban areas, where more sophisticated voters reside. Furthermore, results point to the presence of a relevant degree of persistence in both choices and indicate that past electoral choices influence both voting choices in a way that seems to suggest the existence of protest motives.

Keywords: Invalid voting; blank ballots; null ballots; Portugal; elections. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.uc.pt/en/uid/ceber/WorkingPapers/wp/wp_2017/wp2017_06 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gmf:papers:2017-06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CeBER Working Papers from Centre for Business and Economics Research (CeBER), University of Coimbra Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sofia Antunes ().