Electoral participation, ideology, and party politics in post-communist Europe

The relationship between voter participation and party fortunes has received much attention in the voting behavior literature. Specifically, a number of studies on the advanced industrial democracies postulate that left-of-center parties benefit from higher turnout. This article extends that argument to a quite different context: the economically and politically volatile post-communist world. Using aggregate data from 15 post-communist countries between 1990 and 1999, we test the turnout-party vote linkage. We find that, indeed, increased turnout benefits left parties, particularly the successor communist parties, while adversely affecting conservative and nationalist parties.