sou · GNB3151 · 2000-01-01 00:00:00 — Moreover, when analyzing only a single election, no adequate account can be given of the impact of all those contextual factors effects to be minor, but it is not impossible that they play a certain role in personal relationships such as those between, e.g., husband and wife.or pressure from socially cohesive groups that can be expected to exist in systems dominated by cleavage politics – a cindition that has mostly vanished in western democracies (as documented by, e.g., Franklin, and Valen, 1992). that exist at these elections, that would require explicit comparison with other Swedish elections, with elections in other countries, or both. Such comparative analyses have been conducted for other elections and other countries, however. In the concluding part of this paper I will summarize the findings of those studies and dis- cuss their possible relevance for understanding electoral partici- pation in the Swedish elections for Parliament in 1999. WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT Part 2: Electoral participation in in 1999 The analyses reported below were conducted on data from the Swedish part of Election Study 1999 (EES99). The EES99 is a survey of voters that was executed in the period immediately following the elections to Parliament of 1999. In each of the member states of Union (EU) a random sample of voters was interviewed by telephone, using a questionnaire that on average took approximately 30 minutes to administer.18 This study and the questionnaire were designed and organized by an international research group, just as were its counterparts following earlier European elections in 1989 and 1994. In addition to conducting a voter study, the EES enter- prise conducts other kinds of research related to electoral and representation process, such as studies of elites (MPs, MEPs), studies of the manifestoes and election pledges of the various political parties, studies of legislative behavior by MEPs and their party groups in Parliament, and studies of the way in which the mass media reported and com- mented about these elections and their campaign. The 1999 EES voter-study group consisted of (), (University of 18 The Italian sample was not interviewed by telephone, but by tele- interviewing instead. This sample consists of the members of an existing panel study, who downloaded the questionnaire and completed it on their individual PCs, to then upload the completed version again. The samples were in all other cases drawn randomly. Unsuccessful attempts – due to not reaching the intended respondent or by refusal – may, of course, result in biases of the samples. The data of this study will be archived in the Zentral Archive () and the (), and will become available to interested analysts by the beginning of 2001. Before that time, they can only be obtained with permission of the primary investigators. ), (, , ., ), (, , ), (), (Uni- versity of , the ), and , , and (all from the ). Relevant contextual knowledge and assistence with translations of questionnaires was provided by a series of ad hoc country specialists and native speakers, whose contribution has been of great value. The fieldwork was conducted by an international consortium of survey institutions, coordinated by IPSOS (). The funding for this large-scale study came from different sources. The major part was financed by the , supplemented by a large grant from NWO (the ). Important further contribu- tions came from CIS (), the , the , and (, ., ). The Swedish sample in this study resulted in 505 successful in- terviews, that provide the data to be analyzed below. The structure of the analyses From the interview data, measures can be derived that pertain to the different approaches for explaining voter participation and that were described in Part 1 of this report. For each of these I will first of all report the differential in turnout between its categories, as these differentials manifested themselves in the responses of the Swedish voters in our study.19 This differential is simply the dif- 19 All analyses reported here were conducted on unweighted data, that means that no corrections were made to compensate for any kind of distributional differences between the sample on the one hand and the sampled population of Swedish adults on the other hand. Whereas weighting often affects univariate distributions, it has in general a much smaller impact on bivariate results (such as differences between groups) or multivariate analyses. WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT in percentage points between the first and the second mentioned categories of each measure. It describes differences in turnout, which are very helpful in indicating which of these cha- racteristics of voters matter more, or less, in terms of differences in electoral participation. Yet, these differentials cannot without further ado be (causally) attributed to the measures in question, because of the possibility that the differences between the catego- ries reported may be generated by other important characteristics, that may more plausibly be thought of as causes. Therefore, addi- tional analyses will be presented, in which several measures are used simultaneously to explain (in statistical parlance) the differ- ence between turning out to vote and abstaining. These multi- variate analyses will first of all be presented for each of the clusters of measures that relate to the theoretical approaches discussed earlier, and subsequently for all these jointly. The data of the EES99 contain information about a large number of characteristics of voters. As a start of the analyses to be repor- ted, Tables 1 through 3 present differences in turning out to vote between different groups of respondents. Table 1 reports such differences in when looking at background characteristics of citi- zens. Table 1: Differences in electoral participation by background characteristics, European Elections of 1999 (Data: Swedish segment of EES99, n=505) Turnout differential (%) (men vs. 0.5 (n.s.) (high vs. 4.8 (n.s.) (30 to 60 vs. (over 60 vs. 30 to 60) (yes vs. -7.1 (n.s.) (never vs. (large town vs. Table 1 shows that gender and education matter very in terms of turnout. The difference in turnout between men and women is a mere , a difference that is statistically not significant, as indi- cated by the n.s. designation in the last column.20 In other words, the difference is so small that it could have occurred by chance, without any real difference existing in the population. The difference in turnout for the two education groups is not signi- ficant either, which seems at first surprising. Two things must be kept in mind, however. First, compulsory education far into the teenage years ensures that the very large majority of the popula- tion is endowed with the cognitive and information-handling skills that education is expected to generate, with the consequence that 20 Unless indicated otherwise, in all analyses a p-level of .05 has been used to establish whether or not results are statistically significant. It must be kept in mind that whether or not a difference is significant depends both on the magnitude of the difference and the size of the groups that are compared. The latter are constrained by the total sample size, which is 505. The implication is that differences that are not significant in this study, may be found to be significant in other studies with a substantially larger number of respondents. WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT differences in this respect are smaller than when large portions of a population have barely any formal education at all. Second, educa- tion is measured rather crudely in this study, which also may mask differences that – in spite of the generally high level; of education – could possibly still be found with more refined measurements. 21 The other background variables reported here are, however, very powerful in discriminating between those who voted and those who abstained. People over 60 years of age vote more frequently than those between 30 and 60 (a difference of ), while the latter show a 13.5 higher turnout rate than those under 30. Combining these two differences shows that the oldest of these age groups has an almost higher turnout rate than the youngest! People who sometimes attend church (irrespective of the fre- quency thereof) are considerably more likely to vote than those who say they never to go to church, a finding that seems in line with the social integration hypothesis mentioned in Part 1. This, however, is at odds with the fact that union-members are less, rather than more likely to vote (although this latter difference is not significant, possibly because of the relatively small group of members). Finally, of this group of variables, is urbanisation. Respondents themselves indicated whether they lived in a large town, a small town or a rural area. The difference between the first and the last is significant (), with the respondents living in small towns falling about halfway between the other two groups. Exactly why these differences between more and less urbanised respondents exist is not clear from these descriptive results; but it is clear that the differences are quite pronounced. 21 Education is measured by the age at which the respondent stopped with full-time education. This way of measuring obviously does not represent kinds of education or levels of scholastic achievement. In the analyses here, the responses were divided into two categories: those that ended full-time education before the age of 18 (the low group), and those that ended their education at age 18 or later (the high group). The extent to which a second group of respondent characteris- tics is correlated to turning out to vote is reported in Table 2. These variables all concern aspects of interest in and information and knowledge about politics. These variables form part of the syndrome of civic attitudes and orientations referred to in part 1. The variables that relate to media exposure are also of relevance in the approach that explains turnout by the efforts of mobilizing agents. Table 2: Differences in electoral participation by political in- volvement and knowledge, European Elections of 1999 (Data: Swedish segment of EES99, n=505) differential (%) Interest in the EE campaign (very/some vs. Political interest / general (very/some vs. Pays attention to political news (a lot/some vs. Watched tv programs about (often/sometimes vs. (often/sometimes vs. Watches news on TV / general (always vs. =< 3 days p.w.) Reads newspapers / general (always vs. =< 3 days p.w.) Knows which party won EE (yes vs. (yes vs. (yes vs. (sufficient vs. (n.s.) Table 2 shows that people who are interested in elections and its campaign, who are interested in politics in gene- ral, who keep informed by watching TV-news and reading news- papers about this specific election, or about politics in general, turn out in much higher numbers than those who are not interested, who pay no attention to political news, and who are exposed to information from televison or newspapers. Almost all measures of interest and exposure – irrespective of whether they WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT are focused on election in particular – yield a turnout differential of approximately , which suggests that these dif- ferent characteristics overlap to a considerable extent. Separate analyses (not reported here) show that this is indeed to a large extent the case: the distinction in the sample effectuated by one of the variables (say, interest in the EE campaign) coincides to a very large extent with the distinction that is made by another (such as political interest in general). Three of the variables relate to knowledge and insight. The first is straightforward: whether or not people were able to indicate which of the Swedish parties had won election (only were able to correctly indicate this). The next two variables are proxies for knowledge and insight. They indicate whether or not respondents were able to give any substantive answer to an open question about the most important problems in the country, respectively, which of the parties in the country would be most likely to undertake a preferred policy on that issue. The logic of these variables is that in order to provide any kind of answer, res- pondents need some idea (which may be entirely idiosyncratic) of what goes on in the country and of what the various parties stand for. Both variables are significantly related to turnout, but the dif- ferential is much smaller than in the case of the interest and expo- sure variables. The last variable in this table concerns whether the respondents feel that they are sufficiently or insufficiently informed about the politics of Union. Although those who think that they are sufficiently informed (less than of the sample) turn out in higher numbers, the difference is not statistically signifi- cant. A final series of variables, reported in Table 3, deals with politi- cal preferences, civic attitudes and political approval and satisfac- tion. Political preferences, first of all, relate to the extent that res- pondents identify with a political party, or the extent to which they find one of the parties electorally appealing. Those who iden- tify with a party turn out more often than those who do not. Moreover, the stronger ones preference for a party – irres- pective which – the larger the likelihood that one turns out to vote. For each of the parties in , the respondents were asked how likely it was (on a scale from 1 to 10) that they would ever vote for that party. For each person it is thus possible to derive from his/her entire set of responses which party he/she finds the best one of all, and how strong that preference is (measured on the same scale of 1 to 10). The stronger this preference, the more likely it is that the respondent turned out to vote: if the best party scores a 10, the probability of voting is more than higher than if the best party scores a 9, etc. In other words, the better the best party is in the voters eyes, the more likely he/she is to vote. As this has to do with the specific context of the election, or with the efforts of mobilizing agents in that election – as is equally the case for identifying with parties – this shows that the stronger the affective relation between voters and parties the larger the likelihood of voting. Intention to vote in a national election is also strongly linked to turning out to vote in election. Together with the previous findings in this table this demonstrates that turnout in European elections is very much related to a voters affective linkage to the national party system. WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT Table 3: Differences in electoral participation by political prefe- rences, civic attitudes, political approval and satisfaction, Euro- pean Elections of 1999 (Data: Swedish segment of EES99, n=505) differential (%) Identifies with a political party (yes vs. Preference for best party (10 vs. Preference for best party (10 vs. Preference for best party (10 vs. Votes in national election (yes vs. (agree vs. (agree vs. (agree vs. Political approval and satisfaction Approve of national government (approve vs. (n.s.) Satisfaction with democracy in (satisfied vs. Satisfaction with democracy in the EU (satisfied vs. Satisfaction with policy on EU (satisfied vs. Opinion on EU integration (further vs. EU is good/bad thing (good vs. The three items referred to as civic attitudes refer to three state- ments of which the respondents had to indicate whether or not he/she agrees with them. These three are, in order: Sometimes politics is so complicated that someone like me just cannot understand what is going on. So many people vote in elections that my vote does not matter. Most of the parties in are so much alike that it does not make much of a difference which one is in government. In different ways, agreeing with each of these statements expresses a feeling that it does not make sense to take part in elections. No wonder that in all three cases those who agree with the statement vote in significantly smaller numbers than others. Political approval and satisfaction, as long as they are of a gene- ral kind, have a strong relation to turnout. As soon as the satisfac- tion or approval becomes tied to political parties – as in the case of approval of the government or satisfaction with (government) po- licy on European integration – it is less or not significantly related to voting versus abstaining. Those not satisfied with democracy in are considerably less likely to vote than those who are sa- tisfied. This differential is much smaller for the question about satisfaction with democracy in the EU, which demonstrates that not being satisfied with democracy in Europe is less a deterrent to voting than not being satisfied with democracy in itself. This makes sense: after all, one is represented in Parliament by way of the Swedish parties, and as long as one is content with those, one may as well vote. Disapproval of the EU and of European integration is, how- ever, very much a stimulus to stay at home in elec- tions. Those who find the EU a bad thing (approximately one third of the sample), or who find that integration has already gone too far, have more than a lower turnout rate than citizens who regard the EU as a good thing (also about one third of the sample) and those who feel that integration should be pushed further. This suggests that, to a considerably extent, elections in are elections for a system that a large segment of the population disagrees with. Representation via Parliament is evidently not seen by this segment as a way to im- prove matters, and, in view of the pro-integrative stance of the EP, not entirely without reason. The analyses reported in Tables 1, 2 and 3 are suggestive, but limi- ted in the conclusions that can be drawn from them. Two pro- blems in particular play a role. First, there may be a considerable WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT overlap between the various characteristics that were investiga- ted. Second, even though the turnout differential between groups compared may be large, this difference is not necessarily caused by the characteristic on which the groups differ. In order to deal with these problems, multivariate analysis is necessary; that is, analysis in which a number of different characteristics are simultaneously taken into account in terms of their consequences for turnout. In addition to this, theoretical considerations must be utilized, on the basis of which various factors can be ordered vis-a-vis each other as more distant, or intermediary causes of turnout. I will report here only a limited number of such analyses, using multiple regres- sion methods.22 The investigations consisted of a series of consecutive analyses, in which voter characteristics that were shown to be overlapping in their effect on turnout (in statistical parlance: factors that are multicollinear) were weeded out to such an extent that only the most important of them are retained, and the superfluous other ones eliminated. To the extent that – from a statistical point of view – multicollinear variables are equally important, I chose to retain the most generic one and to drop the more specific one.23 These analyses were done first for each of the blocks of variables distinguished in Tables 1 to 3 (1 block of variables each from Tables 1 and 2, 3 from Table 3). The variables that remained from these analyses (all of them significant within these separate analy- 22An objection against linear methods such as multiple regression is that this technique is not optimally suited for a dichotomous dependent variable, as turnout is. appropriate methods, of the non-linear regression type, are, however, found to rarely differ in substantive results from the method used here (e.g., Oppenhuis, 1995, Franklin, and Oppenhuis 1996). Moreover, they are much less self-evident for a non-technical audience than traditional regression methods. Explicit causal models, in which an entire structure of hypothesized causal rela- tionships is tested, would be the logical next step following the analyses reported here. Such more elaborate analyses will be reported elsewhere, however. 23For a more detailed description and justification of the strategy of analysis, see Franklin, and Oppenhuis (1996). ses) were then successively combined into a final model, the result of which is a multivariate regression model that is reported in Table 4, and will be discussed below.24 Table 4 shows in what sequence the variables of the five blocks were entered and, for each block or addition, the explanatory power of the model (see the column of cumulative adjusted R2). All together, these variables explain 29 percent of the variance, and each of the blocks adds significantly to the explanation, over and above what had already been explained by variables previously en- tered. Although 29 percent of variance explained in turnout-differ- ences does not seem very impressive at first sight, it is actually not a poor result in comparison to similar analyses reported else- where.25 It does indicate, however, that individual electoral par- ticipation is only to a limited extent explicable by the kind of fac- tors discussed; a more complete explanation would in all likelihood require many rather idiosyncratic factors. On the other hand, the results also imply that a small number of voter characteristics accounts to a large extent for turnout differences in a systematic . 24These exploratory analyses were run with pairwise deletion of missing data; listwise deletion yields virtually identical results. 25See, e.g., van der Eijk and Oppenhuis (1990), who in an somewhat similar analysis for the and election of 1989, get to an R2 of 25 percent. In an EU-wide analysis for 1989 Oppenhuis (1995) arrives at an R2 of slightly over 20 percent. Moreover, it would be fallacious to assume that 100 percent is the attainable maximum in explained variance. For a number of technical reasons, relating to skewed distributions of categorical data, the attainable maximum is much lower, often in the range of 50 to 60 percent, but difficult to calculate with precision. WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT Table 4: Multivariate regression of electoral participation in Elections of 1999 (Data: Swedish segment of EES99, n=505) EU is good thing Satisfied with democracy in Identifies with a political party Preference for best party Interest in EE campaign Pays attention to political news Reads papers about EE The column with beta coefficients indicates the relative explana- tory strength of the different variables. The higher this coefficient, the more important the variable in question in explaining why some people vote and others do not. In some instances, the multi- variate perspective of this table results in variables losing their sig- nificance compared to what was seen in Tables 1–3. This does not necessarily mean that such variables are not important in the explanation, but rather that their effect on turnout runs via one of the other variables that is now included in the same analysis. This is the reason why, for example, church attendance and urbaniza- tion are not significant in Table 4. The effect of the urban-rural distinction on turnout is certainly real, but it is largely mediated by opinions about the EU (in urban areas people are more inclined to think the EU is a good thing, in rural areas people tend much more to seeing it as a bad thing), and by differences in political interest and involvement (in rural areas party identification is lower, people pay comparatively less attention to politics, and agree more often with the statement that politics is too compli- cated to understand).