The Effect of Information on Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

@article{Lassen2004TheEO,
  title={The Effect of Information on Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Natural Experiment},
  author={David Dreyer Lassen},
  journal={Public Economics eJournal},
  year={2004}
}
  • D. Lassen
  • Published 1 January 2004
  • Economics
  • Public Economics eJournal
Do better informed people vote more? Recent theories of voter turnout emphasize a positive effect of being informed on the propensity to vote, but the possibility of endogenous information acquisition makes estimation of causal effects difficult. I estimate the causal effects of being informed on voter turnout using unique data from a natural experiment Copenhagen referendum on decentralization of the city administration into fifteen city district councils. Four districts carried out a pilot… 
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Highly Influential Citations
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References

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The amount of political information that voters decide to acquire during an electoral campaign depends, among other things, on prior ideological beliefs about parties and/or candidates. Voters that…
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Voting research is rich in empirical regularities yet a parsimonious theory of voter turnout that can match the facts has proven to be elusive. This paper argues that voter turnout patterns can be…
Voting May Be Habit-Forming: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
Habit is a frequently mentioned but understudied cause of political action. This article provides the first direct test of the hypothesis that casting a ballot in one election increases one's…
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This paper evaluates the ability of common explanatory variables to predict who votes. Logit voting regressions are estimated with more than three dozen explanatory variables using survey and…
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In this paper we show how to incorporate quality of information into a model of voting behavior. We do so in the context of the turnout decision of instrumentally rational voters who differ in their…
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If informed voters receive favorable policies, then the invention of a new mass medium may affect government policies since it affects who is informed and who is not. These ideas are developed in a…
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Though the overreporting of voter turnout in the National Election Study (NES) is widely known, this article shows that the problem has become increasingly severe. The gap between NES and official…
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The authors analyze two-candidate elections in which some voters are uncertain about the realization of a state variable that affects the utility of all voters. They demonstrate the existence of a…
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The authors analyze two-candidate elections in which voters are uncertain about the realization of a state variable that affects the utility of all voters. They assume each voter has noisy private…
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Low voter turnout is a serious democratic problem for five reasons: (1) It means unequal turnout that is systematically biased against less well-to-do citizens. (2) Unequal turnout spells unequal…
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