Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from 70 Electoral Studies
Maxime Coulombe-University of Western Ontario
Field experiments such as Gerber et al.’s (2008) Get-Out-the-Vote study provide causal estimates of the mobilizing effects of social pressure to vote. While offering significant contributions, these studies leave open questions regarding the prevalence of the social pressure to vote and its importance for the turnout decision in everyday life. We have little knowledge of how widespread and salient considerations about the social norm of voting are in the general population or about how these considerations translate into social pressure and shape the turnout decision. Recent observational studies have started to address these questions but are generally limited to one or two elections in one country. This article contributes to filling these important gaps in the literature, drawing on an individual participant data meta-analysis of 70 electoral studies conducted in 11 democracies, encompassing over 273,000 respondents, 241 unique norm perception questions about voting, and over 933,000 norm perceptions measurements. I find a strong and robust association between descriptive norms and turnout while the association between injunctive norms and turnout is weakened considerably when controlling for civic duty to vote.
This content has been updated on 9 September 2024 at 9 h 00 min.
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