Just a Matter of Timing? Local Electoral Turnout in Germany in the Context of National and European Parliamentary Elections

Abstract

This article looks at the impact of national and European elections on turnout in German local council elections. The focus is first on effects from the timing of local council elections in between two federal elections and second on turnout effects from the combination of local council elections and European parliamentary elections. Starting from considerations about the relationships between high- and low-stimulus elections the article analyses data from 111 German local council elections held between 1951 and 2008. The analyses show first that upcoming national elections do mobilise voters to cast their ballots in regions where local council turnout traditionally is low. Second, combining European and local elections tends to reinforce turnout as well.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angelika Vetter is Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Stuttgart.

Notes

1. Since the 1980s, local electoral turnout has been declining in many other western European countries as well, see Henk van der Kolk, ‘Local Electoral Participation in Europe’, paper presented at the DVPW Congress in Münster, September 2006 in the Research Group on Local Politics.

2. See Angelika Vetter, Local Politics: A Resource for Democracy in Western Europe? (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007); Norbert Kersting (ed.), Politische Beteiligung: Einführung in dialogorientierte Instrumente politischer und gesellschaftlicher Partizipation (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008).

3. See Angelika Vetter, ‘Lokale Bürgerbeteiligung: Ein Thema mit offenen Fragen’, in Angelika Vetter (ed.), Erfolgsbedingungen lokaler Bürgerbeteiligung (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008), pp.9–27.

4. See Sidney Verba, Kay Schlozman and Herny E. Brady, Voice and Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

5. Individuals participate because they want to, because the can and because they are asked to participate, see Verba et al., Voice and Equality.

6. Mark N. Franklin, Cees van der Eijk and Erik Oppenhuis, ‘The Institutional Context: Turnout’, in Cees van der Eijk and Mark N. Franklin (eds), Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press 1996), p.311; Steven J. Rosenstone and John M. Hansen, Mobilization, Participation and American Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1993).

7. See Angus Campbell, ‘Surge and Decline: A Study of Electoral Change’, Public Opinion Quarterly 24 (1960), pp.397–418.

8. See Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt, ‘Nine Second-Order National Elections: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Results', European Journal of Political Research 8 (1980), pp.3–44; Karlheinz Reif, ‘National Electoral Cycles and European Elections 1979 and 1984′, Electoral Studies 3/3 (1984), pp.244–55.

9. The term ‘Superwahljahr’ was used the first time in 1994 when an unusually large number of elections were held the same year. This applied as well in 2009: 23 May – election of the Federal President; 7 Jun. – election for the European Parliament and local elections in seven states (Baden-Württemberg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia); 30 Aug. – local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia and elections for the state parliaments in Saarland, Saxony and Thuringia; 27 Sep. – elections for the state parliament in Brandenburgia and elections for the Bundestag.

10. Campbell, ‘Surge and Decline’, p.398.

11. Ibid., p.400. There were numerous publications that followed Campbell by dealing with changes in vote distribution between presidential and midterm congressional elections, e.g. Edward R. Tufte, ‘Determinants of the Outcomes of Midterm Congressional Elections', American Political Science Review 69/3 (1975), pp.812–26; Michael Lewis-Beck and Tom Rice, ‘Forecasting U.S. House Elections', Legislative Studies Quarterly 9/3 (1984), pp.475–86; Samuel Kernell, ‘Presidential Popularity and Negative Voting: An Alternative Explanation of the Midterm Congressional Decline of the President's Party’, American Political Science Review 71/1 (1977), pp.44–66; James E. Campbell, ‘The Revised Theory of Surge and Decline’, American Journal of Political Science 31/4 (1987), pp.965–79.

12. Reif and Schmitt, ‘Nine Second-Order National Elections', p.9.

13. See Reif, ‘National Electoral Cycles', p.246.

14. Ibid., p.247.

15. Franklin et al., ‘The Institutional Context’, p.306; similarly Michael Marsh and Mark N. Franklin, ‘The Foundations: Unanswered Questions from the Study of European Elections, 1979–1994’, in van der Eijk and Franklin (eds), Choosing Europe? p.19; Richard S. Flickinger and Donley T. Studlar, ‘One Europe, Many Electorates? Models of Turnout in European Parliament Elections after 2004’, Comparative Political Studies 40/4 (2007), pp.383–404.

16. Franklin et al., ‘The Institutional Context’, p.317.

17. Reiner Dinkel, ‘Der Zusammenhang zwischen Bundes- und Landtagswahlergebnissen’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 18 (1977), pp.348–59; Charlie Jeffery and Daniel Hough, ‘The Electoral Cycle and Multi-Level Voting in Germany’, German Politics 10/2 (2001), pp.73–98; Frank Decker and Julia von Blumenthal, ‘Die bundespolitische Durchdringung der Landeswahlen: Eine empirische Analyse von 1970 bis 2001’, Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 33/1 (2002), pp.144–65; Charlie Jeffery and Daniel Hough, ‘Landtagswahlen: Bundestestwahlen oder Regionalwahlen?’, Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 34/1 (2003), pp.79–94; Simone Burkhart, ‘Parteipolitikverflechtung – Der Einfluss der Bundespolitik auf Landtagswahlentscheidungen von 1976 bis 2002’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 46/1 (2005), pp.14–38; Klaus Detterbeck, Zusammenlegung von Bundes- und Landtagswahlen? Die Terminierung von Wahlen und ihre Konsequenzen im europäischen Vergleich (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Verlag, 2006); Kerstin Völkl, ‘Reine Landtagswahlen oder regionale Bundestagswahlen? Eine Untersuchung der Bedeutung des relativen Gewichts bundes- und landespolitischer Faktoren auf das Abstimmungsverhalten bei Landtagswahlen’, Doctoral Thesis, Department of Social Sciences, University Stuttgart, 2008.

18. Survey results indicating that Germans show significantly more interest in national politics than in local and European politics confirm this classification of national elections being first-order elections with European, local and state elections being ranked as second-order elections. Question wording: people's interests in politics vary. What about you? How much are you interested in (local politics in your community; German national politics; European politics)? Very (4), quite (3), moderately (2), slightly (1) or not at all (0)? According to this survey, average interest in European politics in Germany is rated 2.16, in local politics 2.18 and in national politics 2.4. Source: Representative survey conducted on behalf of the Freiherr vom Stein-Akademie and the University Stuttgart, Department of Social Sciences, January 2008. The data can be obtained from the author on request.

19. See Klaus Armingeon, ‘Gründe und Folgen geringer Wahlbeteiligung’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 46/1 (1994), pp.43–64.

20. See Angelika Vetter, ‘Citizens versus Parties: Explaining Institutional Change in German Local Government 1989–2008’, Local Government Studies 35/1 (2009), pp.125–42.

21. See http://www.wahlrecht.de/kommunal/index.htm.

22. In the states not shown here similar patterns hold.

23. See Anthony Heath and Iain McLean, ‘Between First and Second Order: A Comparison of Voting Behaviour in European and Local Elections in Britain’, European Journal of Political Research 35/3 (1999), pp.389–414.

24. Local elections were held on the same date as the federal election in 1976 in Lower-Saxony, in 1995 in North Rhine-Westphalia and in 1998 in Brandenburg. The local election in North Rhine-Westphalia was held on the same day as the election for the respective state parliament in 1975. These elections are not part of the data used here in order to perform a more reliable test of the hypotheses. The study was already finished in 2010. Therefore, current data were afterwards added only for the descriptive part of the article but not for the statistical analyses.

25. See Markus Steinbrecher, Sandra Huber and Hans Rattinger, Turnout in Germany: Citizen Participation in State, Federal, and European Elections since 1979 (Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag, 2007), pp.4–5.

26. As the regression model is split for two time periods I abstain from including a curvilinear effect of election year in all models.

27. See Detterbeck, Zusammenlegung von Bundes- und Landtagswahlen?, p.25ff. with regard to the vertical and horizontal alignment of elections for state parliaments.

28. See Vetter, ‘Citizens versus Parties’.