Cross National Determinants of Participation and Voting in Five Democracies Across Europe and North America
Laura C. Brigman •
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research project is to further
understanding of the connection between interest in politics
and voter turnout.
This project studies the relationship
between voter views of their political systems and voter
turnout. The working hypothesis is that high levels of
interest in politics will be correlated with high voter turnout.
The countries included in the study are the United States,
United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, and Mexico. I chose
them because they represent variation in terms of electoral
systems, as well as, levels of economic development.
Quantitative data for this study was obtained from the
following sources:
World Values Survey, International
Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance,
Transparency International, and The World Factbook. I
used regression and graphical analysis to analyze the data.
The independent variables measured individual motivations
and interest in politics and the dependent variable was
average voter turnout in elections between 2005 and 2010.
In order to control for outside factors, the following control
variables were included in the analysis: type of electoral
system, level of corruption, and economic development.
METHODOLOGY
The five cases studied were Germany, Mexico, Sweden,
United Kingdom, and the United States (cases 1-5,
respectively). These democracies were selected for two
main reasons. First, they were available on the World
Values Survey’s Wave 5 study. Second, these democracies
represent a variety of voting systems, historical positioning
on a political scale, and levels of development. Whether it is
the type of voting system, historical political scale
positioning, or the level of development, each country had a
marker that made it unique and therefore necessary to be
included in the study.
In order to measure the independent variables of voter
interest and participation in politics, I chose specific World
Values Survey Wave 5 questions that were most
representative of these variables. The survey questions
selected were: level of importance of politics, how much
freedom the survey respondent feels, self-positioning in
political scale, confidence in the government, confidence in
the parliament, and importance of democracy
The dependent variable is simple, voter turnout. This data
was selected from the years related to the Wave 5 study of
the World Values Survey, 2005-2009 and collected from the
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral
Assistance. Because different elections draw varied level of
voter turnout, whether they are parliamentary or presidential
and legislative, an average from the voter turnout data from
elections during the time span was used as the voter turnout
percentage for each respective country. At the right, you will
see a table representing the elections and calculations used
to conduct the study.
Faculty Sponsors: Jennifer Collins, Ph.D. and John Blakeman, Ph.D. •
Department of Political Science
METHODOLOGY CONT.
ANALYSIS CONT.
The control variables used were the type of electoral
system, the corruption perception index, and the levels of
development.
Upon the completion of entering the data, the data was
entered into IBM SPSS software to analyze. In order to
successfully run the analysis on the cases for each of the
selected countries, six cases in SPSS were set-up with the
data applied to the program by country instead of by data
type. Once this was complete, the independent and control
variables were put into graph form. For this type of data set,
both linear regression scatterplots and line graphs were
utilized in order understand the relationship between the
variables.
As pictured in the linear regression model for the
“Importance of Democracy” variable shows that the R2 value
for this correlation model is 0.799, which although is just
below 0.800, it is the strongest case of any of the
independent variables in this study. With such a high value,
there is indeed a measureable relationship between the two
variables that merits further examination in other studies.
There is not enough evidence to claim that there is causal
relationship, but there is indeed a measurable and testable
relationship between the hypothesis that a high level of
interest in politics, as measured by an individual’s
perception of the importance of democracy, may result in a
high level of voter turnout in a given election.
Control Variables
The control variables portray a much different case. Based
on this study, the different type of electoral system appeared
to have no effect on the voter turnout. This could be due to
the lack of longevity or due to the scope of the study itself.
On the other hand, the correlation between the CPI Score
and the level of development variables when compared to
the level of voter turnout was a strong relationship.
In the CPI Score linear regression model, it portrays an R2
value of 0.774, which although is not as high as one would
hope in a correlation study, it does depict a very strong
relationship between the two variables. In this case, the
lower the level of corruption (high score), the higher the
voter turnout will be within a democracy. The linear
regression model for the level of development does not have
as high of an R2 value as the other control variable, so it
could potentially be rejected or it can simply be rejected until
more case studies are conducted over a longer period of
time.
Therefore, both control variables show that there is indeed a
relationship between the variables included in the study and
the dependent variable that needs to be evaluated further.
Country
Germany
Germany
Mexico
Mexico
Sweden
Sweden
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
United States
United States
United States
Election type
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Parliamentary
Presidential
Year
2009
2005
2009
2006
2010
2006
2010
2005
2008
2006
2008
Voter
Turnout
(%)
70.78
77.65
44.61
58.9
84.63
81.99
65.77
61.36
64.36
47.52
70.33
Average
(%)
74.22
51.76
83.31
63.57
60.74
ANALYSIS
Independent Variables
Each of the linear regression models for the independent
and dependent variables showed that a relationship does
exist between the level of voter interest and the voter turnout
in that country. But when examining the linear regression
model graphs for each of the same variable relationships,
there is not enough evidence to support the claim that there
is a strong correlation between the independent and
dependent variables. For example, the linear regression
model graph for “Politics Important” displays the relationship
between the mean importance level of politics and the voter
turnout for each country. As displayed through the R2 value
of 0.147, there is a very weak correlation between the two
variables. When an R2 value is below ± 0.800, there is
some type of relationship but there is not enough evidence
to determine the validity in the relationship, thus the
hypothesis in this case must be rejected. The same can be
said for each of the independent variables examined in this
research study because the R2 value is so far below an
accepted correlation value that there is no other option but
to reject the hypothesis of this study. On the other hand, the
independent variable that should not be rejected based on
its R2 value is the “Importance of Democracy” independent
variable.
CONCLUSION
There has been an immense amount of research on voter
turnout The hypothesis that as voter interest in politics
increases, the voter turnout will also increase was
inconclusive.
Based on the results, the independent variables showed that
there could be a relationship when examined with voter
turnout, however based on the linear regression model they
should be rejected. It is my hope that with more time and
more data to examine, this study could be completed again
with a focus on the importance of democracy and the control
variables examined as independent variables. Furthermore,
this study may want to explore different data, going beyond
the World Values Survey that was utilized for this study
because there is much more to examine that is not readily
available in the data for this study. Therefore, with more
time and data to be accessed, this study could be conducted
again, but over a longer period of time and with more case
studies. In summary, there is a need to understand the
impact of voter interests on the level of voter turnout across
all democracies so that all persons, whether they are
politicians, pollsters, or others who utilize voter turnout data,
may be able to increase the level of voter turnout in their
respective democracy.
DATA SOURCES
Central Intelligence Agency. Accessed April 1, 2015.
"International IDEA." International Institute for Democracy
and Electoral Assistance. Accessed April 1, 2015.
"Transparency International - The Global Anti-Corruption
Coalition." Transparency International - The Global AntiCorruption Coalition. Accessed April 1, 2015.
"WVS Database." WVS Database. Accessed April 1, 2015.