The Futile Search for the Effect of Turnout

Jo Lind

No 11650, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: High electoral turnout is seen as a key determinant of a successful democracy. One reason for this is that turnout is believed to affect electoral outcomes. This has given rise to a flourishing literature studying the effect of increased turnout on various outcomes. It is well known that variation in turnout is not random, so a plethora of identification strategies are applied to assure causal estimates. In this paper I argue that this endeavor is futile. I first discuss theoretically how we should define increased turnout. Next, I show that with the various identification strategies, estimates are based on the behavioral response of a biased group of voters.

Keywords: electoral turnout; effect of turnout; composition of electorate; econometric identification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11650.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ces:ceswps:_11650

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().