Summary of lesson 9 on voters and elections by professor Jonas Lefevere (academic year ) that contains information from the handbook, slides and my notes
9 Voters and elections
9.1 What are democratic elections?
Elections are a necessary (but not sufficient) part of democracy, because of the
transfer of power between different actors.
Democratic elections require a lot of preconditions…
o free and fair
o universal adult suffrage (= the right to vote)
o secret ballot
o impartial administration of voting and vote counting
o free and equal access to the polls
We can think of many threats to democratic elections abounds (e.g. gerrymandering,
access to the polls, disinformation…).
gerrymandering = drawing electoral boundaries to favour a particular party or interest
9.2 Who votes and why?
voter turnout = the number of citizens casting a valid vote expressed either as a % of
eligible voters or as a % of registered voters
⇨ varies substantially in democratic countries
System factors explaining differences in voter turnout
o importance of the election
Citizens are more likely to vote if they think the election is important.
⇨ elections on local and national level = first-order and most important
⇨ European elections = second-order so less important
o electoral system
PR voting systems have a higher turnout than other systems, because of the idea
that every vote counts and there aren’t wasted votes in PR systems (for example
in the Netherlands small parties can have power in the parliament ↔ in the US
small parties can’t claim a seat in the parliament).
o close, competitive election
Close elections, where every vote counts, tend to have a higher turnout.
o frequency of election
Citizens who are often called out to vote seem to suffer from ‘election fatigue’.
For example Switzerland has a low election turnouts, because of the frequent
use of referendums.
, o compulsory voting = the legal obligation for citizens to appear at the polling
station on election day
In countries where voting is compulsory, the turnout is only about 4-5 percent
higher on average than in countries where voting isn’t compulsory.
Voting should be compulsory. Voting shouldn’t be compulsory.
civil duty abuse of freedom
increased participation cosmetic democracy
countering social disadvantage worthless votes
Individual factors explaining differences in voter turnout
o socio-economic status (SES)
o socio-demographics (age, ethnicity, residence…)
Young and old people are less likely to vote, as well as women and members of
minority groups.
o party identification (PID)
People with a strong party identification (feeling attached to a party) are more
likely to vote.
o values and culture (article parents)
⇨ Post-materialist values promote participation and civic responsibility.
⇨ Low turnout among the young and first-time voters will tend to persist in later
life
o protest voting = voting for a party not to support it but to show opposition to
another party or parties
9.3 What are different voting/electoral systems?
voting/electoral system = arrangements by which votes are converted into seats on
representative bodies
Two main categories…
1) plurality/majority
⇨ goal is to identify a clear winner
⇨ larger parties win a higher proportion of seats than the proportion of votes they
gain in the election
2) proportional representation (PR)
⇨ goal is to represent diversity
⇨ proportion of seats is more or less proportional to votes gained in the election
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