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Estimating the potential impact of nonvoters on outcomes of parliamentary elections in proportional systems with an application to German national elections from 1949 to 2005
Schätzung des potenziellen Einflusses von Nichtwählern auf das Ergebnis von Parlamentswahlen in Verhältniswahlsystemen mit einer Anwendung auf die deutschen Bundestagswahlen von 1949 bis 2005
[working paper]
Corporate Editor
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH
Abstract "'If (voter) turnout was 100%, would it affect the election result?' (Bernhagen and Marsh 2007) is a frequently asked research question. So far, the question has been primarily answered regarding the changes in the distribution of votes. This article extends the analysis to changes in the distributi... view more
"'If (voter) turnout was 100%, would it affect the election result?' (Bernhagen and Marsh 2007) is a frequently asked research question. So far, the question has been primarily answered regarding the changes in the distribution of votes. This article extends the analysis to changes in the distribution of seats and government formation. It proposes a method that factors in apportionment methods, barring clauses, size of parliaments, leverage of nonvoters, closeness of election results, and individual characteristics of nonvoters. The method is then applied to German national elections from 1949 to 2005. The application shows that Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) would have gained from the counterfactual participation of nonvoters, although usually not enough to result in a government change. However by the 1994 and 2005 elections evidence shows that such a government change could have happened." (author's abstract)... view less
Keywords
voting behavior; voter turnout; Social Democratic Party of Germany; election to the Bundestag; Free Democratic Party; electoral system; political action; Federal Republic of Germany; political influence; parliamentary election; political attitude; nonvoter; political behavior; Christian Democratic Union; Alliance 90/ The Greens; election result
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Method
empirical; quantitative empirical
Document language
English
Publication Year
2009
City
Berlin
Page/Pages
34 p.
Licence
Deposit Licence - No Redistribution, No Modifications
Data providerThis metadata entry was indexed by the Special Subject Collection Social Sciences, USB Cologne