Political equality without social equality? Social distortion of voter turnout in the European elections 2019 across nine European capitals

Abstract

Although we know a lot about why citizens vote or abstain in elections, the social inequality of low turnout in European elections has attracted little attention. This paper focuses on voter turnout in the last 2019 European elections and examines whether low voter turnout in second-order elections is automatically associated with high social inequality, using Tingsten’s law as inspiration. By contrasting a second-order election with other high and low turnout elections, the paper deepens our understanding of the mechanisms behind low turnout in European elections. Following the argument that the macrolevel social imbalances of low turnout can best be analysed at the neighbourhood level, we develop a small-scale analysis of turnout across nine capitals of the European Union for the 2019 European Parliament (election and perform a regression model with interaction effects to examine the effects between different types of elections. Our results do not find differences in the effect of neighbourhoods’ social context on voter turnout between these elections. Although turnout in all cities is socially biased across all types of elections, jeopardising the ideal of political equality across Europe, we find no evidence that the 2019 European Parliament elections were more socially unequal than other elections – regardless of their second-order nature.

Keywords

Voter turnout political equality social imbalance European elections second-order elections city districts

Introduction

Low voter turnout is a global phenomenon in democracies at presidential and parliamentary levels of elections (Blais and Dobrzynska, 1998). In Europe the overall trend of turnout has been negative since the 1970s (Franklin and Hobolt, 2011). In European Parliament elections turnout stagnates around 50% despite the 2014 Spitzenkandidaten process (Schmitt et al., 2015). And while the 2019 European ‘elections of fate’ saw an increase in turnout, in fact the voter turnout in eight out of 28 member states still decreased and a majority of eligible voters in 15 out of 28 member states – representing 36% of the total number of European citizens – did not exercise their right to vote.

In the long run, low turnout rates call into question the legitimising power of elections. They jeopardise a basic idea in modern democracies: the ideal of political equality (Verba, 2003). This is because participation in elections today depends heavily on socioeconomic characteristics and turnout imbalanced towards the better educated and wealthier citizens (Smets and van Ham, 2013) weakens the integrative and legitimating functions of elections.

Also, the inequality in voter turnout increases as voter turnout declines (Tingsten’s law). Consequently, for classic second-order elections such as European elections (Hix and Marsh, 2011), we would expect a stronger social distortion than in the respective main elections because decreasing voter turnout rates would automatically be associated with growing inequality.

This leads us to the research question of whether the lower turnout in second-order European elections is concomitant with greater social inequality compared to first-order national elections.

This contribution to the special issue on the 2019 European elections aims at expanding our understanding of the social distortion of low voter turnout for the 2019 European elections: First, we discuss the literature on social inequality in voter turnout and explain why low participation is a problem for political equality. Second, we use the concept of second-order elections to deepen our understanding of the link between social and political equality. We take the long-standing Tingsten’s ‘law of dispersion’ as inspiration to dig into the link between turnout on different levels and social inequality. Third, we follow Stockemer’s criticism and engage ‘systematically [. . .] in comparative research that compares the turnout functions across various levels of analysis’ (Stockemer, 2017: 715). Fourth, we enhance our understanding of mechanisms behind the 2019 European elections as second-order elections by empirically examining the differences in the effect of social distortion on turnout between different elections with varying turnout levels. We use a novel self-assembled data set with data for nine European capital cities – Amsterdam, Berlin, Bratislava, London, Madrid, Paris, Prague, Tallinn and Vienna – at the level of their city districts, to represent the diversity of voter turnout across Europe. To conclude we discuss the findings and their implications.

Social inequality and voter turnout

This paper assumes that social inequality in voter turnout threatens the ideal of political equality. Sidney Verba distinguishes three dimensions of political equality: equal rights (formal access), equal voice (one-man-one-vote principle) and equal capacity and opportunity to participate (Verba, 2003). While the level of voter turnout plays only a minor role for the first two dimensions, it is essential for the third. This dimension of equality can hardly be achieved through legislation and adjusting voting procedures, but only if all socioeconomic groups have an equally high or low turnout. Political equality is thus closely linked to social equality (Persson et al., 2013). Therefore, low turnout rates and a growing imbalance between socioeconomically privileged and less privileged groups call into question the legitimacy of the democratic promise of political equality (Lijphart, 1997).

Admittedly the body of literature on voter participation is extremely fragmented. But despite the broad range of different variables in use (Smets and van Ham, 2013), methodological approaches, and results, one can still find some similarities. Studies about concrete effects of voter turnout on the election result comprehensively confirm that ‘socioeconomic status (SES) is strongly correlated to participation’ (Lutz and Marsh, 2007: 540). Most politicians and parties react to this fact by focusing strongly on districts with a high level of participation. These self-selection and external-selection effects lead to a further downward spiral in both voter turnout and social equality (Lutz and Marsh, 2007).

The law of dispersion and second-order European elections

In addition to Verba’s static argument that low and socially imbalanced turnout constitutes a challenge to democratic legitimacy, Herbert Tingsten introduced a dynamic hypothesis back in 1937. He formulated the so-called ‘law of dispersion’, which underlines the connection between decreasing turnout and rising social inequalities: ‘according to this rule, the dispersion (the differences) in regard to participation in an election or within a certain group, is smaller the higher the general participation is’ (Tingsten, 1975: 175). Conversely, differences between these social groups get worse as voter turnout decreases. Lijphart revived this evidence in 1997, calling the mechanism between social and political equality the ‘unresolved dilemma of democracy’ (Lijphart, 1997). Despite this, there is no consensus that decreasing turnout necessarily lead to growing inequality (Dassonneville and Hooghe, 2017), as the law of dispersion would predict.

Research on voter turnout in combination with social inequality has increased significantly in recent years (Cancela and Geys, 2016). Although many studies on turnout refer to the law of dispersion, very few have empirically tested it. While Sinnott and Achen (2008) find no evidence in the US context and only moderately strong effects in the EU context, Persson et al. (2013) find strong support for it in a Swedish natural experiment. Bhatti et al. (2019) also find the law confirmed in Denmark – another high turnout context. Studying six countries of the EU, Dassonneville and Hooghe (2017) confirm this mixed picture, finding some evidence for the law, but not in all of the countries studied. Additionally, all these studies examine the relationship either only in individual countries or for individual elections.

This paper therefore looks at several elections across several cities in different countries. Our main focus will be on the 2019 European Parliament elections and how they compare with the preceding national main elections. The European elections have been repeatedly classified as classic second-order elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1980). Next to several other characteristics, one major distinguishing feature of second-order elections is turnout, which is significantly lower than in national main elections. European elections have been shown to be low-participation elections (Steinbrecher and Rattinger, 2012). But why are lower turnout levels linked to greater social inequality?

There are several reasons why the link might exist for the European elections, deriving from the second-order character of the election (Reif and Schmitt, 1980): (a) In European elections, there is a general perception that there is less at stake (less-at-stake dimension). On the voters’ side this is accompanied by little knowledge about the European elections, little interest and a lesser sense of voting as a civic duty (Stockemer and Blais, 2019) than in national elections. It is mainly those who are interested in politics and have a good knowledge of European politics, who vote in European elections. Both characteristics, as well the sense of civic duty, correlate strongly with socioeconomic status (Stockemer and Blais, 2019). Furthermore, vote abstention is much more likely among those who are dissatisfied with their last vote for governing parties in first-order elections (Schmitt et al., 2020: 12). (b) European elections continue to represent a specific (unfamiliar) arena (specific-arena dimension). Most of the actors – party activists, journalists, candidates and also the voters – are still acting on unfamiliar terrain in the European elections. A new and confusing information situation can be a barrier to mobilisation. Once again, it is the better-off groups in society who are better able to deal with this confusion because of inequality in resources. For example, inequality in education is most pronounced when the election process is complex and there are many parties (Gallego, 2010). Both of these factors are certainly present in European elections. (c) Election campaigns are even more important in second-order elections (campaign dimension). A low interest in the European election campaign increased the likelihood of abstaining in past European elections (Schmitt et al., 2020: 11). European election campaigns continue to be conducted by national parties, which have other important elections in mind. Although parties put more emphasis on European issues on their Euromanifestos than on national manifestos (Braun and Schmitt, 2018: 6), these issues are often seen as insignificant when weighed against the ‘national’ issues of the party. Parties are also much less willing to spend money on voter mobilisation. This is especially true if the party expects to be successful even in a situation of low turnout (Reif and Schmitt, 1980). Parties strategically direct their efforts towards the districts that are most promising. These are often districts with high turnout, which are mostly economically better-situated areas (Lutz and Marsh, 2007). (d) Finally, and in addition to (a), voters in European elections are core voters. These are voters who generally vote in elections and do not skip single elections (Bhatti et al., 2019). Core voters are again predominantly better educated and earn higher incomes. European voters are often citizens with an established habit of voting (Franklin and Hobolt, 2011).

Taken together, it can be deduced from the second-order elections model that European elections are particularly susceptible to social imbalances in voter participation. However, only a few studies on European elections have taken social inequalities and the concept of second-order elections into account (Bhatti and Hansen, 2012; van der Eijk et al., 2007). We would like to close this gap and address the connection between the law of dispersion, second-order elections and voter turnout. We predict that the social inequality in the turnout in European elections will be more pronounced than in national main elections.

Research design: Voter turnout in city districts across Europe

Unit of analysis: individual city districts

‘By looking on the national electorate as a whole one ignores substantial variation in group size across geographic boundaries and almost necessarily diminishes the role that small minority groups can play’ (Hajnal and Trounstine, 2005: 517). While this statement by Hajnal and Trounstine was aimed more on changes in election results, the statement is also true for turnout. Smaller units are often more homogeneous, while in larger units similarities fade due to greater heterogeneity. Within cities social segregation is more pronounced, which reinforces the division into classical ‘voter districts’ and ‘non-voter districts’. In addition, Cancela and Geys concluded that in subnational elections, attachment to the local community has a stronger effect than in national elections (Cancela and Geys, 2016). The local context in which citizens live influences how much they participate in political life. Our contribution on the social inequality of non-voters intends to capture this ‘neighbourhood-effect’ (Barber and Imai, 2014) and therefore will go beyond the narrow focus of large units of observation, like nations or subnational regions. Studies pursuing this novel small-scale analysis approach emphasise the importance of these analyses over the mere effect of sociodemographic influences (Bellettini et al., 2016; Cho et al., 2006). Consequently, the neighbourhood level will open the perspective for a hitherto largely neglected scholarly perspective. So far, except for Germany (Schäfer, 2015), there is only one other study in Europe that looks at the effect of small-scale social differences on turnout in Bologna (Bellettini et al., 2016).

Selected cities

We selected nine cities from EU countries scoring traditionally low (Czech Republic, Slovakia), medium (Estonia, the Netherlands, UK) and high (Austria, France, Germany, Spain) on turnout in European elections. They performed very differently on turnout during the European elections in 2019, ranging from +20 percentage points in Spain to +1 percentage point in Estonia compared with turnout in 2014, covering the North, South, West and East of the European Union. In addition, the cities represent a wide range of variation in turnout between the city districts in one election. While in European elections in Paris the between-district difference is only about 18 percentage points, in Amsterdam it is more than 60 (see Table 1). In sum the cities represent 5% of the total EU population and represent capitals of their respective countries with smaller (430,000 in Bratislava) and larger (8.9 million in London) total number of inhabitants, and varying numbers of districts (from eight in Tallinn to 103 in Amsterdam). While the difference between the highest and lowest turnout across the regions of our nine selected countries is on average 12.5 percentage points, the difference between city districts is about twice as large with more than 25 percentage points, which supports our argument that smaller areas are more homogenous. (Please find this information in the online supplementary material.)

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics of selected EU-capitals.

Capital City	# of districts	turnout figures for the respective election
Capital City	# of districts	max. EP 2019	min. EP 2019	max. first-order	min. first-order	max.local	min. local
Amsterdam	103	83.50	19.90	99.10	42.80	77.89	27.76
Madrid	21	76.22	57.40	84.18	71.04	76.78	57.95
Vienna	23	73.34	50.18	81.53	69.18	80.97	69.26
Berlin	12	69.00	49.40	81.70	69.30	50.50	43.99
Paris	20	67.17	49.08	87.47	78.83	64.18	50.03
London	33	54.04	31.56	na	na	51.38	29.54
Prague	57	53.88	29.25	82.27	65.97	71.16	29.46
Tallinn	8	52.60	31.10	75.69	55.58	62.80	49.80
Bratislava	17	44.12	24.98	78.00	59.96	50.44	26.91

Note: The table shows the highest and lowest turnout in the city districts in the respective elections.

EP: European Parliament

Operationalisation of the social situation in city districts: unemployment

At the aggregate level, unemployment has proven to be a good indicator of the social condition of the respective unit of analysis (Schäfer, 2015; Schwarz, 2012). A high unemployment rate affects the working citizens in the district and depresses their willingness to vote through social interdependence, and fosters an atmosphere of rejection of the political system (Cebula, 2017). Accordingly, we will use unemployment as a proxy for the latent variable ‘socioeconomic background’ of city districts.

Data

The data sources are official statistical offices of the cities and/or their respective countries. These official statistics have the advantage that they are not affected by overreporting (Karp and Brockington, 2005). Survey data also tend to underestimate social differences in voter turnout (Lahtinen et al., 2019). Turnout is consistently calculated as the ratio of voters to votes cast.

While unemployment is the only indicator which is measured at the neighbourhood level on a fairly comprehensive basis, its operationalisation is more complex compared to turnout. In addition to official unemployment rates, we were provided the ratio of unemployed to the working population in a certain age group, and in one case the ratio of unemployed to the total population including pensioners and children. Sometimes unemployment data is not available for all years in which the elections took place. We have dealt with these challenges as follows: first, in the case of missing data, the most recently available figure is used. Second, we z-transform the unemployment data. We do this to account for the national differences in measuring unemployment. We assume that the distribution between the lowest values and the highest values of unemployment is roughly the same no matter what the exact operationalisation is. Thus, the standardised values mirror the true values, while allowing us at the same time to compare the data between different cities.

Method

Using bivariate scatterplots for each city we show the effect of social inequality on turnout. Next, we pool the data to compare the effects using a linear regression model with interaction effects of electoral type and unemployment. The districts are nested in the cities and the elections, which is why we use cluster-robust standard errors. We then test the argument that lower turnout is associated with greater social inequality by comparing different elections. We use data for the second-order European elections in 2019 as well as the most recent preceding national first-order election and another second-order local election (mostly those of the City Council). (A list of all elections is provided in the Online-Appendix.)

Results

Despite the European-wide increase in turnout during the 2019 European elections we find that voter turnout is socially unequal across Europe. Comparing voters at the district level, Figure 1 shows that voter turnout in first-order national elections and second-order European and local elections is significantly imbalanced in favour of certain districts. Across Europe, voting is significantly less likely in districts with a low social status – regardless of the election type.

Figure 1.

Scatterplots of unemployment and turnout across capital cities and election type.

Notwithstanding the expected significant differences in electoral participation in national, local and European elections, the social inequality of low turnout is stunningly equal between elections. This shows that second-order elections with lower turnout are not systematically more socially imbalanced than their preceding national main election – despite the special characteristics of second-order elections.

To determine whether the link between unemployment and turnout remains the same between the different elections, we build a linear regression model with interaction effects (see Table 2). (We provide a multilevel-model as a robustness check in the Online Appendix.) Model 1 contains only the dependent variable of turnout and the unemployment figures of the different districts. A significant negative effect can be observed here already; in Model 3 it becomes even more pronounced.

Table 2.

Linear Regression Model to compare the social inequality between elections.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3
Unemployment	−3.57^***	−3.58^***	−4.19^***
Unemployment	(0.31)	(0.30)	(0.61)
Reference: EP election
Election type: national		24.27^***	24.27^***
Election type: national		(4.18)	(4.18)
Election type: local		3.04	3.04
Election type: local		(5.54)	(5.54)
Reference: Unemployment x EP election
Unemployment x national election			0.83
Unemployment x national election			(0.72)
Unemployment x local election			1.04
Unemployment x local election			(0.77)
R²	0.05	0.50	0.50
Adj. R²	0.05	0.50	0.49
Num. obs.	816	816	816
Nested in cities x elections	9 x 3	9 x 3	9 x 3
RMSE	2.73	1.99	1.99

***

p < 0.001, ^**p < 0.01, ^*p < 0.05.

Cluster robust standard errors in parentheses.

EP: European Parliament

Model 2 contains dummy variables for the election type. On average, the turnout for the national first-order election is about 24 percentage points higher than for the 2019 European elections. The difference between local elections and European elections is about three percentage points and not significant. The two second-order elections in our model therefore do not differ significantly in their turnout.

Model 3 includes additional interaction effects between the effect of unemployment and the effect of the election type. Both coefficients are not significant, i.e. there is no statistically demonstrable difference between the effect of unemployment on turnout, no matter which election is considered. Although the elections differ in the level of turnout, the effect of the social context on turnout remains the same across all elections.

Discussion and Conclusion

This contribution deepens our understanding of the social inequality in turnout in the 2019 European elections by addressing the question of whether lower turnout in second-order European elections is concomitant with greater social distortion in comparison to first-order national elections. Our results indicate that this is not the case. Despite systematically lower turnouts in the European Parliament elections in comparison to national first-order elections, the 2019 European elections were not more socially unequal.

This partly contrasts the results of Persson et al. (2013), Bhatti et al. (2019) and Dassonneville and Hooghe (2017). One reason for this could be that both Persson et al. and Bhatti et al. tested turnout in extraordinarily high turnout contexts (Denmark and Sweden) and therefore might have analysed a kind of ceiling effect (Gallego, 2015).

Our results also find a strong correlation between the social context and voter turnout in the nine EU capitals studied. The better the living conditions in the district, the higher the turnout. But it seems that although the 2019 European elections were characterised by an increase in voter turnout, the social inequality is as strong as in other elections. The European elections, generally described as ‘special’, do not seem to be really special from the perspective of social inequality.

Where does this leave us? First, European elections are not more but still as socially distorted as first-order national elections. This appears to be not only a country specific but a pan-European phenomenon. Second, the living environment of citizens is important for the question of whether citizens become voters or not. Surprisingly, however, the effect of this context does not seem to differ between different types of elections. But as much as unemployment is a good indicator of the social context of neighbourhoods, the analysis has not yet been extended to other indicators, e.g. education. Also we focused on capital cities, which might be systematically different from other cities or rural areas across Europe. All in all, pan-European comparable small-scale data is needed to extend this avenue of research.

Additionally, our results suggest, that we have not fully understood the theoretical mechanisms behind contextual influence on voter turnout. While extensive literature on aggregate and individual factors’ influence on turnout exist, it seems like something else is going on, at this small scale but aggregate level.

Overall social and economic structures and the living conditions of citizens in the capitals of Europe are causing certain population groups to withdraw from the political process. The ideal of political equality is threatened all over Europe and furthermore, the threat is independent from the country and the first- or second-order character of the election. Future reforms of European electoral laws would do well to take this into account.

Supplemental Material

Online_material_for_RAP – Supplemental material for Political equality without social equality? Social distortion of voter turnout in the European elections 2019 across nine European capitals

Supplemental material, Online_material_for_RAP for Political equality without social equality? Social distortion of voter turnout in the European elections 2019 across nine European capitals by Stefan Haußner and Michael Kaeding in Research & Politics

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and all participants at the #EP2019@UDE conference in Duisburg for their comments. Our special thanks go to the two associate editors Ariadna Ripoll Servent and Nils Ringe for their excellent work. Furthermore we would like to thank the members of the Department of Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the participants of the Comparative Politics Colloquium at the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the participants of the ECPR SGEU conference in Paris and André Blais for their invaluable feedback at different stages of the project.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Stefan Haußner

Supplemental materials

The supplemental files are available at

The replication files are available at

Carnegie Corporation of New York Grant

This publication was made possible (in part) by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

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