WHO DOES NOT PARTICIPATE IN ELECTIONS IN EUROPE AND WHY IS THIS?

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the research question ‘Who does not vote and why?’ regarding national elections in 24 European countries. We analyse determinants of non-voting both on the individual and the societal level employing a multilevel design. On the micro level, the sociological determinants under consideration are education, cohort and gender. Regarding psychological or motivational factors, we include in the analyses political efficacy, political interest, political trust and satisfaction with politics. On the macro level, we analyse characteristics of the electoral system, including opportunities for ‘direct democracy’, maturity of democracy, disproportionality factor, and if the participation in elections is compulsory. The data source of the analyses is the European Social Survey 2006. A first main finding is the fact that the probability of non-voting is higher among people with a low level of education and among younger cohorts. The motivational factors have similar impacts on non-voting across all analysed societies. Lack of political efficacy, lack of political interest, lack of political trust and dissatisfaction with politicians and the political system increase the probability of non-voting. Regarding macro influences, countries with compulsory voting and ‘old democracies’ turn out to have a lower rate of non-voting, although these effects vanish when simultaneously modelled with the social psychological micro level indicators.

Keywords:

• non-voting
• education
• cohort
• multilevel analysis

Notes

¹Data Source: TNS opinion/European Parliament.

²Data Source: International IDEA.

³Although class differences in non-voting have been found in the US (Verba et al. 1978), such class differences do not occur in other countries (Weakliem and Heath 1999).

⁴This hypothesis may also be supported by the findings of Scott and Acock (1979) that people with lower socio-economic status – these are usually lower educated people – are less committed to electoral voting, are less interested in politics and feel less efficacious, resulting in a lower participation level.

⁵Meyer (1977: 179–80) doubts the ‘theoretical usefulness’ of the party identification for the explanation of voting, as both variables are theoretically very close to each other. There is little benefit from the finding that people who identify with a party participate in elections to support this party.

⁶Some authors recognise an increasing disenchantment with politics (‘Politikmüdigkeit’) in Switzerland, although there are more participation opportunities there than in other countries (Freitag 1996: 5).

⁷A comparison of official non-voting rates and the ESS 2006 sample shows that the official non-voting rate is always higher.

⁸External political efficacy was not included in the ESS questionnaire.

⁹Whereas the ESS covers the social values of Schwartz (1992), postmaterialism values in the sense of Inglehart (1977) were not included in the survey. To use universalism and prosocial values (Schwartz 1992) as a proxy of postmaterialism is not be adequate, since the participation dimension – being important for an analysis of voting – is missing.