Participation in elections varies throughout Europe, and while politicians frequently claim that high turnout suits them, it cannot be true for all parties. Some authors have claimed that there is a positive correlation between turnout and support for left-wing parties; others have said that increased turnout aids challengers. Both these hypotheses have received support using data on the US, bu...

I consider a two-candidate plurality-rule election in which there is aggregate uncertainty about the popularity of each candidate, where voting is costly, and where participants are instrumentally motivated. The unique equilibrium predicts significant turnout under reasonable parameter configurations, and greater turnout for the underdog offsets the expected advantage of the perceived leader. I...

The paper presents evidence on the effect of voter demobilization in the context of the Canadian 2011 federal election. Voters in 27 ridings (as of February 26, 2012) allegedly received automated phone calls (‘robocalls’) that either contained misleading information about the location of their polling station, or were harassing in nature, claiming to originate from a particular candidate in the...

Union Organizing Decisions in a Deteriorating Environment: The Composition of Representation Elections and the Decline in Turnout It is well known that the organizing environment for labor unions in the U.S. has deteriorated dramatically over a long period of time, contributing to the sharp decline in the private sector union membership rate and resulting in many fewer representation elections ...

Utilizing studies which validate voter turnout, previous researchers have been able to identify a strong tendency for individuals to report voting when they in fact did not. In this paper, we assess the effectiveness of a new turnout question on reducing voter over-reporting in the National Election Study. Providing respondents with socially acceptable excuses for not voting, we find that this ...

This paper uses the consolidation of polling places in Los Angeles County during the October 2003 gubernatorial recall election to study the costs of voting. The consolidation afforded an opportunity to observe a natural experiment: those whose polling places were changed in the consolidation should be statistically comparable to those whose polling places are not changed. Thus, we may observe ...

Investigation of vertical vibrations of a railway turnout is important in designing track components under moving loads of trains. In this paper, the turnout is simulated by a linear finite element model with modal damping. A section of the turnout has a length of 36 sleeper spans surrounding the crossing. Rails and sleepers are modeled with uniform Rayleigh- Timoshenko beam elements. The rail...

According to the Washington Post, Republicans are urged to pray for poor weather on national election days, so that voter turnout is decreased, thus strengthening the party’s prospects for victory. While this is an extreme example, it is emblematic of a belief that has taken deep root in the conventional wisdom on American electoral outcomes: that the Republican Party benefits from reduced turn...

This study examines the effects of negative political campaigns on voter turnout over the last 10 years. Voter turnout in the United States is extremely low in comparison to other advanced industrialized nations, and the negativity that surrounds our elections may be the key to understanding why. The study is also a response to recent scholarship with conflicting conclusions on how the tone of ...

Regular church attendance is strongly associated with a higher probability of voting. It is an open question as to whether this association, which has been confirmed in numerous surveys, is causal. We use the repeal of the laws restricting Sunday retail activity (“blue laws”) to measure the effects of church-going on political participation. The repeal of blue laws caused a 5 percent decrease i...