There is no such thing as the effect of turnout∗

Jo Thori Lind†

June 1, 2022

Abstract

High electoral turnout is often seen as a key determinant of a successful democ-

racy. 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. Still, all these approaches affect
different voters differentially. In this paper I argue that it is not possible to estimate
a general measure of the effect of turnout as the estimate depends on the situation
at hand. Using register data on turnout in Norwegian elections, I finally study the
difference between the group of voters potentially reachable by random shocks to
the uniform outreach we would ideally like to achieve.

Keywords: Electoral turnout, effect of turnout, composition of electorate, econometric

identification

∗
I am grateful for useful comments from Joaquı́n Artés, Harm Rienks, and participants at the 2022
EPCS conference.
†
Department of Economics, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: j.t.lind@econ.uio.no

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1 Introduction
High election turnout is important for the legitimacy of any democracy (i Coma, 2016;
Lijphart, 1997). Electoral turnout varies between countries, election types, and over time.
It also varies across groups of voters. Moreover, when voters differ systematically from
the electorate, turnout affects policies. In most countries, middle aged well off, highly
educated voters have higher rates of turnout than other voters – increasing political power
of this group.
There is a massive literature on describing the difference between voters and non-
voters (see e.g. Cancela & Geys, 2016; Geys, 2006). There is only a small literature on
describing the peripheral voter – individuals who only vote on some occasions (Nawara,
2016). These voters do, however, share many characteristics with the non-voters.
High turnout is a goal in itself and often seen as a strength to democracy. But there
has been substantial academic interest in finding effects of changes in turnout. Would
increased turnout lead to other parties coming into power, referenda tipping in the other
direction, or other policies being implemented?
It is widely acknowledged that turnout is driven by a range of factors, many of which
we cannot easily observe. Hence omitted variables is a potential challenge, and simply
comparing elections with high turnout to elections with lower turnout is not likely to give
meaningful insights. This has paved the way for a large literature employing various tools
to attempt to tease out casual effects of increased turnout.
First there are some more direct approaches. Fisher (2007) studies the relationship
between turnout and the left wing vote share, both in levels and changes, in 23 OECD
countries. However, contrary to common belief, there is no clear pattern. Mueller and
Stratmann (2003) find that increased participation leads to a more even distribution of
income, but at the expense of reduced growth rates. Fumagalli and Narciso (2012) show
that higher voter participation tends to increase government expenditure, total revenues,
welfare state spending, and budget deficits.
Then there is a blossoming literature employing various instrumental variables ap-
proaches and other sophisticated identification strategies to attempt to tease out a causal
effect of turnout. One famous example is the use of rainfall to instrument for turnout.
Although the idea goes back at least back to Koopmans (1949), the first paper to study
the relationship between electoral day rainfall and turnout was probably Knack’s (1994)
study, using US National Election Surveys. He found no robust significant effects of rain,
partially because of a small sample. More recently, Gomez et al. (2007) studied the effect
of rain and snow on US electoral turnout. They find that precipitation negatively affects
turnout. They go on to estimate a second state of how turnout affetcs support for the
two major US parties.
Similar results are found in many countries, but there are also opposing findings in

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some countries. A negative relationship is found in Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, Italian,
and German data (Arnold, 2018; Arnold & Freier, 2016; Artés, 2014; Eisinga et al., 2012;
Horiuchi & Saito, 2009; Lo Prete & Revelli, 2014; Sforza, 2013). For Sweden, however,
Persson et al. (2014) find no robust relationship between turnout and the weather, and
Lind (2020) finds a negative relationship in Norway. Many of these studies construct a
second stage on how turnout affects electoral outcomes. Typically, an increase in turnout
strengthens the left wing parties at the expense of the right or regional parties.
Rainfall and referenda: Rudolph (2020), Munley et al. (2022)
Another frequent approach is to use reforms in electoral rules. Using a reform to
identify the effect of turnout, Finseraas and Vernby (2014) find a positive effect of par-
ticipation on support for the Labor party. Aggeborn (2016) use an electoral reform to
study the effect of turnout on expenditures and tax levels, confirming that high turnout
expands the size of the public sector.
Alipour and Lindlacher (2022) use change of location of poling stations in Munich.
Strong, but heterogeneous findings.
Various “threats” that make voting less attractive, and that vary across time and
space, can also be used as an identification strategy. Montalvo (2011) uses the fear after
the terrorist bombings in Madrid as a shock to turnout, and Getmansky and Zeitzoff
(2014) use the intensity of bombings in Israel.
On a less dramatic plane, Godefroy and Henry (2016) use the prevalence of seasonal
infections to instrument for turnout and find that increased turnout lowers the quality of
elected officials. Over the last couple of years, the effect of the COVID pandemic has been
used. Frank et al. (2020) use the introduction of a lockdown between the first and second
round of the local elections in Bavaria in spring 2020 as a shock to turnout. They find
that the lockdown was associated with increased turnout and support for the incumbents.
Giommoni and Loumeau (2021) use a geographic regression discontinuity approach ex-
ploiting the border between “red” and “green” zones in France in 2020. Turnout is higher
in more stringent zones, as is the incumbent’s vote share. Relatedly, Picchio and Santolini
(2022) study the effect of differential in mortality among the elderly due to COVID in
Italian municipalities and it’s effect on electoral turnout. In a similar vein, Gutierrez et al.
(2021) use the 2009 H1N1 virus outbreak as an instrument for turnout and incumbent
performance.
The timing of elections, as off-cycle elections attract fewer voters (Anzia, 2011, 2014).

2 A stylized model of turnout

To fix ideas, I focus on the case of finding the effect of turnout on support for a particular
political party. The model is not limited to this case, though. This could also be support
for candidates with specific policy positions or attributes as well as issues in a referendum.

3
 Consider a society with two parties, a left wing party L and a right wing party R.
Voters are differentiated by their incomes y, where y is distributed over Y ⊆ R with a
distribution with cumulative distribution function F (·). Assume for simplicity that there
are no mass points so y also has a well-behaved probability density function f (·).
A voter with income y decides to vote if

u(y) + ϵ ≥ 0 (1)

where ϵ is a random utility shock with CDF G(·) and density g(·). Normalize functions so
Eϵ = 0. Among voters with income y, a fraction ℓ(y) votes for party L and the remaining
share 1 − ℓ(y) votes for party R.
Among voters with income y a fraction G(u(y)) of the population votes yielding a
total turnout given by
Z
G(u(y)) dF (y).
y∈Y

We now see that the vote share of party L is given by

Z
SL = ℓ(y)G(u(y)) dF (y).
y∈Y

and the advantage or disadvantage of party L compared to party R is

Z
S∆ = [2ℓ(y) − 1]G[u(y)] dF (y).
y∈Y

3 What is increased turnout?

A number of studies attempt to study the effect of “increased turnout”.

3.1 A uniform increase

When thinking about the term “increased turnout”, we are often led to think of an
experiment where all groups of voters increase their turnout equivalently. In out setting,
this would imply that that turnout increases by a fixed fraction τ at every income level
y. To reconcile this experiment with the framework presented in Section 2, we need to
expose a fraction τ of the non-voters at every income level y to a sufficiently strong utility
shift to transform them into voters.
This could for instance be by introducing a utility shock for all individuals with ϵ <
G−1 (τ ), but if the support of ϵ is the real line, this shock has to be infinitely large. This
is not necessarily the only way to implement a uniform increase in turnout. Still, it seems

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far fetched that any natural experiment should lead to this type of uniform increase in
turnout. It does serve as a benchmark for the “real” increased turnout experiment.
Now turnout for voters with income y would increase from G(u(y)) to G(u(y)) + τ .
Hence the vote share of party L is given by
Z
SL = ℓ(y)[G(u(y)) + τ ] dF (y).
y∈Y

and the advantage or disadvantage of party L compared to party R is

Z
S∆ = [2ℓ(y) − 1][G(u(y)) + τ ] dF (y).
y∈Y

Moreover, the effect of support for party L can be found as of “increased turnout” can be
found as
 Z
∂S∆ 
= [2ℓ(y) − 1] dF (y) (2)
∂d d=0 y∈Y

3.2 A uniform shock

In light of the framework presented in Section 2, how would typically increased turnout
materialize? To model a change in turnout, we need to tweak the utility of voting given
by equation (1). Let the utility be given by

u(y) + d(y) + ϵ ≥ 0 (3)

where d(·) is a shock to the utility of voting for individuals with income y. If the shock
is uniform so d(y) = d for all y, a marginal shock lead to an increase of

∂ 
G(u(y) + d) = g(u(y))
∂d d=0

This implies that this type of shock has the strongest effect on income groups where the
typical person is indifferent between voting and not, i.e. where u(y) ≈ 0. We can also
see that the effect of the outcome variable of interest, the vote advantage of the L party,
satisfies
 Z
∂S∆ 
= [2ℓ(y) − 1]g[u(y)] dF (y)
∂d d=0 y∈Y

Compared tot the result in equation (2), party L gains if it has the strongest position, in
the sense of ℓ(y) > 1/2, in groups with high g[u(y)] where turnout increases most – that
is income groups where a large fraction of voters are close to indifferent between voting
and not.

5
3.3 Differential shocks
The uniform shock d we have discussed so far has weaknesses. It is, however, cleaner
than most shocks to turnout that can be observed in real world data. In such settings,
we have to use policy reforms or shocks to the costs or benefits of voting. In most cases,
such shocks affect different groups of voters differentially. Hence the shock d(y) is not
independent of y. One way to analyze differential shocks is to let d(y) = dδ(y) for some
constant d and function δ(·). Now a marginal shock lead to an increase of

∂ 
G[u(y) + dδ(y)] = δ(y)g[u(y)]
∂d d=0

the vote advantage of the L party, satisfies

 Z
∂S∆ 
= [2ℓ(y) − 1]δ(y)g[u(y)] dF (y) (4)
∂d d=0 y∈Y

When comparing to the benchmark in equation (2), we now get an additional bias
term. In addition to the already existing effect of some income groups having more
marginal voters, the effect of the turnout shock is not dependent on whether it is strong
in parts of the income distribution where party L has a competitive edge or not.

3.4 Econometric identification

In the introduction, I reviewed some common strategies to identify the effect of electoral
turnout on various outcomes. One approach is various instrumental variables approaches,
for instance election day rainfall. As for all instrumental variables approaches, we can
typically hope to estimate the local average treatment effect (LATE). Individuals who are
not affected by the instrument, either because they vote anyway (always takers) or don’t
vote anyway (never takers) are not measured using this approach. Instead, estimated
effects are based on those who vote only when exposed to the instrument (compliers).
In his study of US voters, de Souza (2021) finds that rainfall has no effect on aggregate
turnout in US elections. However, the turnout among poorer voters declines and the
turnout among the rich increases.1
It is clear that the fraction of compliers is not evenly distributed among groups. First,
the density of individuals close to indifference between voting and non-voting differs among
groups, so the estimated effects can clearly not be seen as uniform estimates introduced
in Section 3.1. Moreover, in the language of Section 3.3, the δ(·) varies across groups.
This means that there is an additional bias dues to the difference between the compliers
and the population at large, which can be descried by equation (4).
1
This is actually an indication that a LATE interpretation of results is not warranted and teh presence
of defectors invalidates the LATE theorem.

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 It may be that some identification strategies, such as lockdowns, may have a more
uniform effect. But even if we could argue that the associated δ(·) is constant, there
would be a bias from groups with larger number of peripheral voters being more heavily
affected. This would even be the case for otherwise clean experimental studies such as
“Bring out the vote” (Nickerson, 2008) and SMS campaigns (Bergh et al., 2020). Hence
it is impossible to claim to estimate a single true causal effect of turnout. Rather, various
empirical approach affects groups differently, each estimating it’s own effect of turnout.

4 Estimating turnout effects

Joaquin: Relate this to econometric theory Is this worse than the usual heterogeneous
treatment effects? No, it’s a LATE. But the treated varies heavily between experiments.
Identification -¿ Estimate a LATE Based on marginal voters
1) Marginal voters are different 2) The set of marginal voters varies between instru-
ments 3) For some shocks, there are defectors. E.g. Lind (2020), increased turnout for
poor, reduced for poor when sunny. Maybe the same for the Bavarian Covid study.

5 Empirical analysis
As we have seen, any identification strategy has the effect of transforming some group of
non-voters into voters. To get some idea of what these groups can be, I present a small
empirical study based on Norwegian electoral data.

5.1 Data
In Norway all eligible voters are automatically included in their home municipality’s voter
files. The eligibility criterion is in principle well defined and eligibility are in most cases
derived from public records. (The voter files are available for public inspection before
each election, and anyone can demand corrections to the files if it can be substantiated
that eligible names are missing or non-eligible names are included.). On election day,
the turnout of the regularly casted votes are recorded. (The pre-votes and votes casts in
other municipalities are recorded, after being declared legitimate.) Traditionally the voter
files is a physical document. Starting in 2011 a test with computerized electronic voter
records was started in 9 municipalities. By 2015 27 municipalities are included, covering
1.7 million voters out of 4.016 million eligible voters. These municipalities encompass the
five largest municipalities (Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Bærum). The rest of the
included municipalities contain several middle-sized cities. Hence, the electronic voter
files has an urban bias.

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 The electronic file is a binary record of eligible voters that did cast vs did not cast a
vote. The electronic voter files are maintained by the tax authorities and when construct-
ing them they use the national id-number (‘personnummer’). This unique identifier makes
it possible to link the voter files to other register data. The linked dataset we have, in
addition to the voter files, contains demographics, health, education, family relations, tax
records, labor market history etc etc. Currently the data set contains the parliamentary
election in 2013 and the municipal election in 2015. See Bratsberg et al. (2019) for further
details on the data.

5.2 Results
In Figure 1, I show the relationship between income percentile and electoral participa-
tion. Participation is taken from the 2013 parliamentary election and the 2015 local
election. Individuals who vote in neither are classified as never voters, those voting on
both occasions as always voters, and the remaining individuals as peripheral voters.
We see that among the lowest income groups, less than half of the voters vote on
both occasions, the rest dividing approximately evenly among the never voters and the
peripheral voters. The fraction always voters increase to above 80 % in the highest
income groups. In these income groups, the never voters almost vanish completely and
the fraction of peripheral voters also diminish substantially.
Any supposedly valid identification strategy works by affecting a group of voters who
would otherwise not vote. These groups are typically found in the group of peripheral
voters, so a “ shock” to turnout increases turnout among the group of peripheral voters.
From these analyses, we see that this then typically means increased turnout among
poorer voters, hence reducing the income of the typical voter.

6 Conclusion
In a society with multiple groups, e.g. income levels or educational attainment, the effect
of increased turnout should be the effect of moving a fraction of the non-voters into voters
in each groups where the number of movers is proportional to the group size. Compared to
this benchmark, all empirical approaches fail, although some more miserably than others.
If we could introduce a uniform utility shock to all non-voters, we would get a bias
from the fact that the number of marginal voters – voters that respond to such a shock
– is non-uniformly distributed across groups. Hence the experiment would be biased by
the excess weight given to groups with many marginal voters. Using register data on
turnout from Norwegian elections, I show that the group of marginal voters share some
characteristics with the never voters, e.g. both groups consist disproportionately of low
income individuals.

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 Figure 1: Income rank and electoral participation

1.00

Always voted
0.75
Share

0.50

0.25
Voted once

Never voted
0.00

0 25 50 75 100
Income percentile

Notes: The graph shows the share of the electorate voting in both the 2013 Parliamentary
election and the 2015 Municipal election, the share voting in neither of the two, and the
share voting in only one of the two by income percentile. The solid lines are cubic fits of
the underlying data.

9
 Most common identification techniques used in applied work rely on various shocks
that affect some groups more than others. Rainfall, for instance, would affect voters
without a car more than votes with a car. This introduces an additional bias. Hence
estimating a common “effect of turnout” seems to be unachievable.

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