Unequal Participation in Local Referenda and Local Elections in Germany

Political participation is socially distorted: Groups with high socio-structural resources participate more strongly in elections or other forms of political participation than groups with low socio-structural resources. This finding is one of the most frequently confirmed results in empirical research on political participation and questions the principle of political equality. This so called social selectivity has been proven above all for elections but also in unconventional forms of participation such as collections of signatures or protests. In this paper we ask about social selectivity in local referenda and compare it with social selectivity in local council elections in Germany. The analyses are based on data for 56 referenda and 56 local council elections that took place in German cities (>100,000 inhabitants) between 2000 and 2017. First, we show that social selectivity is also a problem of direct democracy. Secondly, the comparison between referenda and elections shows that in most cases the selectivity problem in direct-democratic voting is lower than in elections. We thus refute the frequently expressed assumption that the inequality problem is greater in referenda than in representative elections. Theoretically, we justify these findings with assumptions based on the theory of rational voter behavior. We also show for referenda that there is no linear negative correlation between the level of voter turnout and the degree of social selectivity that is often expected.