Voter turnout

Voters lining up outside a Baghdad polling station during the 2005 Iraqi election. Voter turnout was considered high despite widespread concerns of violence.
Voter turnout in Western countries elections (in %, starting 1900/1945; more details by clicking and seeing Wiki Commons description for the image).

In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford University political scientists Adam Bonica and Michael McFaul, there is a consensus among political scientists that "democracies perform better when more people vote."[1]

Institutional factors drive the vast majority of differences in turnout rates.[2] For example, simpler parliamentary democracies where voters get shorter ballots, fewer elections, and a multi-party system that makes accountability easier see much higher turnout than the systems of the United States, Japan, and Switzerland.[2]

  1. ^ "Opinion | Want Americans to vote? Give them the day off". Washington Post. Retrieved 2018-10-11.
  2. ^ a b Michael McDonald and Samuel Popkin. "The Myth of the Vanishing Voter" in American Political Science Review. December 2001. p. 970.