Long-run effects of earlier voting eligibility on turnout and political involvement
- Author(s)
- Jonas Jessen, Daniel Kuehnle, Markus Wagner
- Abstract
Theories of habit formation and transformative voting posit that voting has long-run consequences for turnout and political involvement, with younger voters possibly experiencing more pronounced effects from earlier eligibility. Long-term evidence of the effects of becoming eligible to vote at a younger age remains scarce. We use rich, long-term panel data from the United Kingdom to examine the effects of earlier voting eligibility on turnout and political involvement. By leveraging the election eligibility cutoff in a regression discontinuity design, our precise estimates document that earlier eligibility results in con-temporaneous increases in several measures of political involvement. However, these short-term effects fade away quickly and do not translate into permanent changes in turnout propensity or political involvement. Our results imply that, in a setting with low institutional barriers to vote, the persistent and transformative effects of being eligible to vote at a younger age are short-lived at most.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- Universität Duisburg-Essen, Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)
- Journal
- Journal of Politics
- Volume
- 86
- Pages
- 1045-1059
- No. of pages
- 15
- ISSN
- 0022-3816
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1086/729972
- Publication date
- 2023
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/longrun-effects-of-earlier-voting-eligibility-on-turnout-and-political-involvement(cccdc378-5d32-495b-89fc-dea3b1c4a457).html