Polity size and voter turnout revisited: micro-level evidence from 14 countries of Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Students of local elections have had a lasting interest in Dahl and Tufte’s conjecture that jurisdictions with smaller populations should enjoy higher voter turnout rates than their larger counterparts. This hypothesis is typically tested at the aggregate level. While valuable, such aggregate-level studies are nonetheless prone to ecological fallacy; inhabitants of smaller municipalities may differ systematically from those of the larger ones as regards relevant individual-level traits. In order to overcome this difficulty, we analyse data from a large-scale survey of more than 18,000 respondents from over 1,000 municipalities located in 14 countries of Central and Eastern Europe. We thus simultaneously evaluate the effects of municipal population size and those of citizens’ individual traits. We demonstrate that inhabitants of smaller municipalities indeed tend to vote more in local elections, but not necessarily in national ones. The effects of respondents’ individual traits are similar for both election types.