Arbeitspapier
Opening Hours of Polling Stations and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
Voter turnout has declined in many industrialized countries, raising the question of whether electoral institutions increase voter turnout. We exploit an electoral reform in the Austrian state of Burgenland as a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of opening hours of polling stations on voter turnout. The results show that a 10 percent increase in opening hours increased voter turnout by some 0.5 to 0.9 percentage points. The effect is substantial because voter turnout was already around 80 percent before the reform in question. The results also show that the vote share of the conservative party decreased in the course of the reform, while the vote shares of the social democratic party and of the populist rightwing party (both parties attract blue-collar workers) increased. Enhancing participation in elections by extending the opening hours of polling stations remains a question to what extent politicians and voters believe that the benefits of higher voter turnout overcompensate for additional costs of longer opening hours.
- Sprache
-
Englisch
- Erschienen in
-
Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 6036
- Klassifikation
-
Wirtschaft
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
Cultural Economics: Public Policy
- Thema
-
voter turnout
party vote shares
opening hours of polling stations
natural experiment
Austria
- Ereignis
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (wer)
-
Potrafke, Niklas
Roesel, Felix
- Ereignis
-
Veröffentlichung
- (wer)
-
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
- (wo)
-
Munich
- (wann)
-
2016
- Handle
- Letzte Aktualisierung
-
10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ
Datenpartner
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Objekttyp
- Arbeitspapier
Beteiligte
- Potrafke, Niklas
- Roesel, Felix
- Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
Entstanden
- 2016
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