District magnitude and electoral turnout: A macro-level global analysis

The conventional wisdom assumes a positive relationship between a country’s district size and its electoral turnout. However, recently, this ‘rule’ in electoral politics has been questioned on several occasions. Trying to resolve these discrepancies, this article aims to comprehensively examine the link between the two concepts. Using multiple statistical techniques (that is, descriptive statistics, means-testing and multivariate regression analysis across all democracies for which electoral data were available from 1970 to 2012), I find some support for the conventional wisdom in western countries; that is, larger districts are conducive to higher electoral participation there. However, in non-western countries, all types of evidence portray that the district magnitude does not have an influence on turnout there. This implies that the dynamics that relate institutions to electoral participation are distinct in the western and non-western world.