Improving democracy - Causal Effects on Turnout (I-DET)
As election turnout decreases, the inequalities in turnout increases. Using voter data from all Danish elections in the past 15 years, the project aims to better grasp these turnout inequalities, how social factors affects them, and how to enhance strategies for future voter mobilization.
Examining a unique dataset consisting of Danish voter turnout over 15 years combined with accurate government-supplied socio-demographics, the project will analyse social environment's influence using voter list-based individual turnout panels. Tracking shifts in individuals' social circles (e.g., living with a partner, losing a partner, moving etc.) between elections, it is possible to estimate the effect on turnout.
Professor Kasper Møller Hansen, Ph.D. is the project manager and underlines how the research will create new knowledge useful for future elections: “With this project we aim to get a better understanding of voting as a social act, and how turnout can be elevated to address this pivotal democratic challenge”.
To project is set out to answer two key questions in the field of voting and democratic participation:
- What factors influence individual-level turnout, unravelling its causal underpinnings?
- How can interventions be strategically devised to elevate voter participation rates?
By addressing these questions, this research aims to not only enrich the turnout literature but also offer actionable insights to bolster democratic engagement and reinforce the legitimacy of the political process.
The first sub-project is a panel study where the individual level voter files from previous election are merged with the new elections to create the longest possible individual level panel of voting and voter characteristics over time. By using panel data, it is possible to overcome problems with time invariant unobserved heterogeneity and thereby provide good causal estimates of the factors influencing voting.
Two areas of focus are central for the sub-project. One is to understand especially the influence of voters’ social environment e.g. their household and the second is to understand the generational effects on turnout using the panel.
The second sub-project is conducting randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to consider the impact of various interventions aimed at increasing the turnout especially among immigrants and young citizens. This is possible due to the size of the experiments, containing almost every Danish voter at individual level.
As part of the project the largest Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) experiment in Danish history took place during the 2024 European Parliament election in Denmark in June 2024. 75% of the entire voting population received a text message reminding them of the election, while the remaining 25% was part of a control group. The text directly mobilized 0.53 percentage points of the voters or ensured 15,000 people who otherwise would have stayed at home voted (see report ‘Effekten af mobilisering ved Europaparlamentsvalget 2024’, in Danish).
Researchers
| Name | Title | |
|---|---|---|
| Esther Ejrnæs Bastholm | PhD Student |
|
| Kasper Møller Hansen | Professor |
|
Funding
Contact
Kasper Møller Hansen
Professor, PI
E-mail: kmh@ifs.ku.dk
Phone: +45 35 32 33 92
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Department of Political Science
Øster Farimagsgade 5E
DK-1353 København K